Interview with a New Hire

Time will tell if it’s a good or bad thing if people out there in the real world listen to my words and use them to help make life altering decisions. One of my young readers, Jaysen, tells me that I helped him make up his mind to pursue a job in the airlines. I’m not sure if he’s stroking my ego or being sincere, but nonetheless, he got hired as a flight attendant and as luck would have it, he now works for my airline!

I haven’t had the honor of flying with him just yet but I have introduced him around the JFK base and also to some of my friends back home in Austin when he had a long layover there a couple of months ago. He just completed his required 6-month probationary period and now he’s officially a stewardess like me, but younger with fewer laugh lines and more hair. Here is what an ordinary guy has to say about the flight attendant position/lifestyle after six months on the job… 

How old are you and why did this profession appeal to you in the first place? I doubt a high school guidance counselor suggested it to you, right?

I’m twenty-eight years old and a musician. That’s what has put money in the bank some way or another up to this point. One day I was doing some stock trading (a hobby) and came across a news article that said our airline was hiring. I love to travel and was in between music gigs at the time, so I thought, “Why not?” I applied for the job on a whim, never thinking it would actually happen.

I got a notification that I was selected for a phone interview and then after the phone interview was chosen to go to headquarters to interview in person. That went extremely well, but I still wasn’t sure if the job really fit with my music career. I got online and started doing more research about the job and that’s when I came across your blog. The blog led me to buy your book and after reading it, I knew that this was something I had to try. It’s such a flexible job that I’m able to work on my music just as much as before, and now I have great travel and health benefits.

I’m curious to see how you use this job in your music career. There are many possibilities for you.

To be honest, when I started this blog and wrote the book, I never dreamed that a stranger would be interested in what I had to say. I really thought I was just doing something to make my friends laugh. God bless the internets. Which of the clichés about passengers, pilots, flight attendants have stood up?

Passengers – It seems that anytime anything goes wrong, most of the passengers assume that we have much more control over the situation than we actually do.

“They made me check my bag before I came through security.”

“I didn’t book my ticket a month ago to sit here with mechanical problems.”

“This weather isn’t that bad. Can’t we get out of here before the really bad stuff hits?”

It’s funny that sometimes when we have delays, some of the passengers get notified on their smartphones before the crew even finds out. That being said, there really is very little we can do in most of these situations besides lend a listening ear and agree that the situation is less than ideal. As you say in your book, nothing defuses a bad situation faster than agreeing with the person. (Nice plug, thanks)

It’s frequent that I have people complaining to me as they are boarding, saying that someone along the way was “extremely rude to them.” I always look them in the eye, smile, and say, “I am so sorry that you were treated that way. But now you’re with me, and I’ll be kind to you!” That usually gets some sort of smile out of them and gets the flight started on the right foot.

Pilots – Ego.

Flight attendants – I would have to say the gossip. There’s an old saying about spreading information: “Tel-e-phone, tell a flight attendant.” And it really is so true. Something small happens before you leave on a trip — say someone has a small fender bender in the airport parking lot. By the time you return three days later, the whole base knows about it and “some guy drove his car through the side of the airport and three people were killed.” And since flight attendants are constantly traveling, you’ll even start to hear the blown up story at other bases as well!

Very true about the gossip mill and our propensity for exaggeration. We’re a dramatic bunch for sure. I’m not sure if Ego is a bad thing for pilots, but it’s definitely true. What was the most surprising thing you’ve encountered on the job?

It’s astonishing how many passengers play Candy Crush! We’re talking like 1 in every 5 people is busting chocolate bars at some point during the flight (this sometimes includes flight attendants). This goes for just about any trend out there. The plane is an amazing place to see what is trending and what trends are fading out.

Also, I’ve been surprised at what makes people applaud after we land. There have been flights where everyone is laughing and happy and some great interactions have taken place between the crew and the passengers inflight but it is dead silent when we land. On other flights, people are mad and complaining about the temperature, we run out of the most popular drink options, the plane comes down hard and bumpy on the landing, and people start cheering! Am I missing something here?

I love the Dominican passengers for that reason. Things can get heated and voices raised, but it’s still all good at the end of the day. Love me the DR flights. And yeah, you always know the hippest new games and books because you’ll see them all over the place. What is your least favorite part of being a flight attendant? 

Honestly, my least favorite part of the job is having to see people at their worst. I like to think of the plane as a magical, giant tube that shows peoples’ true colors. Some people manage to be so incredibly gracious and kind, even when we have delays or things go wrong. One day we had two mechanical delays on the same flight and a couple missed their flight to South Korea AND their wedding the next day! Yet, they were the two kindest and most understanding people on the plane. Others, though, fall apart over the smallest things and lash out — sometimes for seemingly no reason at all. One first class passenger flipped out on us once, because there was a bag in the overhead bin above her seat. Mind you there was still plenty of room for her luggage — the issue was that there was any bag other than hers in the 6 foot long overhead bin. I don’t know what it is about being on the plane that drives people to that sort of behavior. Maybe it’s the music that plays during boarding that sounds like a Japanese funeral. Or maybe they are on their way to a funeral themselves. I try to take a step back when people are rude or hateful and give them the benefit of the doubt. Many will come around when you treat them with kindness. Others don’t, but at least I’ve tried.

Wow. Those people missing the wedding deserve sainthood. That’s amazing. I find people on domestic flights seem to get more bent out of shape about stupid things than international passengers. Not sure why. What were you not prepared for when you started this profession?

I didn’t realize how hard flying is on your body! One or two flights won’t do much, but when you spend 80-120 hours in the sky a month, it’s very easy to get dehydrated and fatigued. Once you get dehydrated, being on the plane is miserable! I honestly think that staying hydrated is honestly the hardest part of the job. That being the case, I drink 1-2 liters of coconut water between trips and several liters of water a day on the plane. Even that sometimes is not enough.

Also, it’s a very physical job. They told us this in training, but I think several of us were thinking, “Yeah, yeah, yeah…what’s so physical about serving people drinks?” Boy, did I ever have a shock when I got “on the line” and started pushing the 300 pound drink cart up the incline of the aisle!

True. And being a nice guy I’m sure you help weak and elderly people with their overhead bin items, even though you’re not supposed to. I do that all the time, it’s really the only exercise I get. It’s also surprising how much walking you do during a flight. It doesn’t seem like you do that much but I know some people who have worn pedometers and it was shocking. Do you think you’ll be doing this in a year? 5 years? 20 years?

In a year? Definitely.

5 years? Probably.

20 years? Never say never.

I think I would’ve said “Probably not” when I first started and thought about the 5-year mark. Twenty years would be a resounding “Hell NO” but I guess I should rethink that since I’m in year 16 now. What in my book was dead wrong or dead right?

“Straight Guy in the Queer Skies” is pure literary gold! So much so that I think it should replace our in-flight manual that the FAA requires us to carry. Everything in the book is dead-on (and no, Brian is not paying me to say this)! There are a couple of things that have really resonated, though.

First of all, nobody tells you how they want their coffee!

They just say, “Coffee.”

And then you say, “How do you take your coffee?”

And they say, “Regular.”

And you say, “What does regular mean?”

And they say, “You know, regular!”

And you say, “Do you like milk and sugar?”

And they say, “Milk, no sugar.”

And you make the coffee and hand it to the person and they say, “Where’s the sugar?”

This sort of interaction takes place multiple times each flight.

Another point that consistently rings true is how each route you fly has its own unique set of passengers that come with their standard sets of preferences and behaviors. This is true to the extent that on most routes one can predict which drinks and food items will be the most popular before the people even board the plane. Most flights touching Dallas will have some Dr. Pepper drinkers, whereas on flights going to New York, you get several people asking for “seltzah.” It becomes predictable and even funny after awhile. Besides, Miami. If flights were Uno cards, the route between New York and Miami would be the wild card. Anything can happen on those flights. Anything!

Case-in-point: One evening, I had a family board a Miami flight and sit in first class. There was a mother, a father, and two young girls. I noticed during boarding that one of the girls didn’t look like she was feeling well. Her dad said that her stomach had been bothering her, so I got her some cool ginger ale to try and help settle her queasiness. (Spoiler Alert: she had the stomach flu.) We take off and are about 10 minutes into the flight when the other little girl begins projectile vomiting EVERYWHERE — onto her seat, her mom’s seat, the back of the seat in front of her, and all over the floor around them. It was honestly fascinating that such a small girl could have so much vomit stored in her body! (Spoiler Alert: she had the stomach flu, also.) We were still ascending, so the vomit began running under the girl’s seat right into one of our highest priority passengers’ brand new Coach hand bag. While I’m down on my hands and knees wearing vomit-covered gloves, cleaning up the mess, one of the other first class passengers taps me on the shoulder and demands to know why he has not been served his dinner yet! That’s the sort of behavior that’s typical of those flights.

Oh yeah, not just Wild but Wild Draw Four on Miami-NYC flights. Strangely enough I have not had a projectile vomiter on a flight yet (knocking wood.) Was there a time in your probationary period when you wanted to go off on a passenger or coworker but didn’t because you could get fired? And thanks again for the unsolicited plug- Straight Guy in the Queer Skies can be purchased here.

In the grand scheme of things, difficult passengers have been easy to handle because if they throw hate your way, you never have to see them again. That being the case, it’s not that hard to be diplomatic and “kill em’ with kindness.” It’s the occasional “difficult” flight attendant that can be challenging, because you might have to work with the person for several days. You just have to take a deep breath and keep on keepin’ on.

On one particular flight, I walked up to my gate to get on the plane and was quickly greeted by another flight attendant on my crew. The first words out of her mouth were “Hi, I’m (insert name) and you must be Jaysen. I see that you’re new and that being the case, you probably haven’t ever worked this position before so there are two options: I can switch positions with you and you can work in the back (I was working first class), or I can come up and work on the other side of the meal cart with you and teach you how to do it. I had been working for several months already and had done this position before, so I remember thinking, “Or option three: You can do your job and I can do mine.” Maybe this lady was really trying to be helpful, but my gut said that she was unhappy with her position and really just wanted to switch. But I’m always up for learning something new, so I told her that I had worked the position before, but if she liked, she could come up and work the meal cart with me and maybe give me some pointers along the way since she had been doing it quite awhile longer than I. Long story short, this translated into us working the meal cart together while she loudly criticized my serving techniques in front of the passengers. And it was all trivial things that she criticized that didn’t affect the service one bit. It got to the point that customers were concerned and were asking me quietly later if that harsh lady was my supervisor. I don’t know if people felt sorry for me or if the contrast in customer service techniques worked in my favor, but I had multiple customers that day ask for my name and say that they wanted to write a good letter to the company about me. That was also the day I realized how much sitcom potential this job has.

Yeah, it’s rare that a coworker will selflessly offer to help you by changing positions. Nine times out of ten they want to have your position and are masking their intentions under the guise of helping you out. Good for you for standing your ground. I’ve seen more bullying on the plane than I did in Junior High School. I’m also shocked that an intelligent show hasn’t been created about the flight attendant lifestyle or even about a crash pad in itself. Someone needs to get on that. Vince Gilligan? I’m looking in your direction! How has the job affected your relationship with your girlfriend?

Being based 2,000 miles away with a random schedule has not been easy, but being able to see each other for pennies on the dollar helps a lot. She has been very supportive of me taking this job, even though it means we don’t get to see each other as much as we would like to. Our company allows employees to register one person as a flying companion that has the same travel benefits that we do. I registered her, but kept it a secret for awhile. She’s working toward a pHD and recently graduated with her Master’s degree. As her graduation gift, I surprised her with the news that she was registered as my travel companion. Now I can go see her when I’m off and she has the ability to come see me or meet me someplace when she’s got down time. Win-win.

It’s totally do-able to sustain a long distance relationship in this biz, the biggest obstacle is trust I think. Do your coworkers believe you when you tell them you’re straight? Do any of them think that in a years time you won’t be? I still have a few friends that think year 16 is the one when I come out.

Most of my coworkers seem to believe that I’m straight — at least to my face. I’ve only had one lady say that she assumed I was gay until I told her otherwise, but she said she assumes that about every guy she works with (nice save). I usually make some comment about my girlfriend during the trip and most of the old timers’ ears perk up at that and start asking me questions about my relationship. Some of them even ask for relationship advice. Most of the senior male flight attendants I’ve flown with have been gay, but I’ve been shocked by the number of straight new hires I’ve come across — some that even have wives and kids and like to talk football! Either I’ve come across a good amount of the rare exceptions in the past six months or quite a few straight guys are starting to figure out what a hidden gem this job is.

Yeah that’s going to continue. Six days ago a lady said the same thing to me about assuming I was gay because of the uniform. It’s fun to mess with people. When she asked if I was gay, I said, “Only on layovers.” That confused her and delighted my Purser. Does your dad admit that he has a son that’s a flight attendant?

You know, it’s awesome how supportive my dad has been of this whole choice. I think at the end of the day, he’s just glad that I am doing something I enjoy. He’s always concerned that I’m not making enough money as a new hire to support myself in New York, so he checks up on me from time to time  to make sure I’m doing alright. When I graduated from flight attendant training, my parents drove in to celebrate with me. My dad picked me up from my hotel to take me to the ceremony and when I walked out in my uniform, he got this big smile on his face. He told me how proud of me he was and said he didn’t really care what kind of uniform I wore — it was just really cool to see me in a uniform. Given my dad’s military background, that meant a great deal to me.

Since they have amazing flight benefits too, you should take them somewhere. Paris or Rome or Tokyo maybe. Have you taken advantage of your flight benefits yet?

I’ve used them some, but I was cautious of doing much traveling on probation, because if for some reason I hadn’t been able to get on the flight back to work in time, I could have been fired. I have used my benefits to commute home quite a few times, though, and my girlfriend and I flew to London for a week last summer. Now that I’m off probation, watch out world — here I come!

Where are the best and lamest places you’ve had a layover in?

My best layovers have been in San Francisco and Austin. My lamest…any layover where we’ve stayed a few feet from the airport.

When you get old like me you’ll sometimes cherish those boring layovers where you’re forced to stay in and relax. SOMEtimes. Have you witnessed any cheating wives or husbands? 

Yes, but not so much flight attendants / pilots, as passengers. There have been a few times when I’ve seen passengers “with a ring on it” getting a bit too friendly with the person sitting next to them. You know it’s not the person’s spouse because you have a front row seat to the whole show — the “let me help you lift your bag”, the introduction of names and what each person does, and then the hours of jovial conversation that follow. The worst case of this I’ve seen was on a transcon flight to LA awhile back. This guy and lady end up seated next to each other in business class, both wearing wedding rings. The quality of their conversation was growing friendlier in direct correlation to the number of drinks they were consuming, and we noticed they were beginning to get a bit touchy/feely with each other. Long story short, another passenger comes up to the purser of the flight saying that he has just witnessed two people sneak into the lavatory together. The purser banged on the door, telling them she knew they were in there and that they needed to come out. The door slowly opened, the “couple” quietly slinked back to their seats, and we didn’t hear much from them the rest of the flight.

Someone recorded their shame on their smart phone right? Is it on YouTube? Classy. Have you had any medical situations or emergency landings?

Since I started the job, things have been pretty low-key in the emergency department (knock on something — there’s not much wood inside an airplane). However, in training we’re required to assist on some flights to get a feel for the job, before we’re on the plane working the positions by ourselves. Around the time I did my first assistance trip, the movie “Flight” had just come out, with Denzel Washington playing an inebriated pilot. That day, a passenger told one of the flight attendants during boarding that she suspected she smelled alcohol on the Captain’s breath when she talked to him in the terminal. The flight attendant had to call in the report and the flight was delayed for an hour while management came down to the plane and breathalyzed the pilot in question. Luckily, it was a good natured Captain who passed with flying colors and laughed it off. In fact, he kept calling back jokingly, asking if we could get him something to drink. After we finally took off and got up to cruising altitude, a passenger stood up and passed out in the aisle. Once she had regained consciousness and we had helped her be seated again, we hit some pretty turbulent air and the majority of the last pick-up service was collecting used sick bags. Welcome to the glamorous world of flying!

Gross. You deal with much more puking than I do, thank God. Do you like the general public more or less after these six months as a flight attendant? 

My view of the general public hasn’t really changed. I guess if anything it’s just been more reinforced. I gave up hope in humanity as a whole, a long time ago. But I still hold out hope for people at an individual level and I think anyone can affect change around them. For example: A few months ago, I was working a flight that started as the flight from hell. There had been weather that day, so many flights were delayed or cancelled. As people were filtering onto the plane, everyone was mad and complaining about their connection situations and how late we were. One group of nine people were absolutely livid because they were connecting from an international flight and two people in their group didn’t clear customs in time to make it on our flight. The other flight attendant and I made up our minds from the get-go to just smile and have fun. One by one, we talked to people, smiling, laughing and joking, and one person at a time, the lightheartedness began to spread (a few comped drinks to those most inconvenienced didn’t hurt, either). We were genuinely kind to people, but then I sat back and watched as the people we were kind to started being kind to the people around them, and then those people were kind to the people around them. It was a chain reaction from the front of the plane to the back. By the end of the flight, passengers were mingling with people sitting in rows other than their own, and one could periodically hear outbursts of laughter all throughout the cabin. When we landed, the entire plane applauded. It took very little effort to turn that flight around — once we started it, the people did it on their own. Anyone can do that anywhere — the issue is that most people don’t take the time to try.

So what happens on the plane should be implemented into society to save all of mankind? You might be on to something. What is the best part of the job? 

They say that this job is not just a job, but a lifestyle, and it is so true. For some new hires, that is a deterrent, but honestly, it’s my favorite part of the job. If you’re resourceful with the travel benefits and scheduling flexibility, this job allows you to live in a way that would be nearly impossible otherwise. There are flight attendants that live all over the world, doing incredible things. They commute into their base when it’s time for work, and after they’re finished, they commute back to wherever it was they came from. It’s such a flexible job that for the most part, it allows you to be where you want to be, when you want to be there, doing whatever it is you want to be doing.

Very true. For me it’s a very easy means to a fantastic end. Have you had to sell out even a little bit for your airline job? 

There have been some tradeoffs for sure. I’m most comfortable barefoot, in a t-shirt and cut-offs, doing something outdoors. Now I have a job in which I wear a suit and tie everyday inside a giant metal container. Also, I’m a big supporter of local economy and small businesses, and most airlines are obviously large corporations. I work for “the man,” but it truly is one of the coolest jobs I ever could have asked for.

We most certainly work for a big heartless corporation. We, like most flight attendants, are nothing more than employee numbers and very replaceable  Some people hate feeling so insignificant but I kinda like it. There are advantages of being a part of a massive operation and being able to fly namelessly under the radar. The travel and health benefits are fantastic for starters. Do the senior flight attendants treat you well or are they annoyed at how new and inexperienced you are?

98% of the senior flight attendants I’ve flown with have treated me with nothing but kindness and respect and have been more than helpful in teaching me the ropes of my new job. The other 2%…well, maybe they were just having an off day.

Those 2% have off days every day. They’re just called “days” after awhile. We all have a mental list of coworkers we never want to work in the same cabin in. Are your new hire friends more professional or the seasoned veterans? 

I’ve seen the good, the bad, and the ugly on both sides of the coin. The new hires are fresh out of several weeks of intense training, so most of them are pretty by-the-book and they do a great job with the people. It’s just that we’re still learning and a bit unsure about how to handle some of the irregular situations that come up from time to time. Some new hires handle this uncertainty with cockiness which doesn’t get them very far. Others handle it with humility and respect for the senior flight attendants, and they are well accepted and very effective.

A great deal of the veterans are very professional, and while not always by the book or adhering to uniform regulation, they have amazing experiences over the years that have taught them how to give the passengers what they want and deal with the crazy situations that crop up sometimes. This job can be strenuous and it seems like it’s easy to get burnt out being on the go so much. Also, since 9/11, things have gotten far less glamorous for travelers and flight attendants alike. That being said, I have a high respect for the senior flight attendants that still do their job well after so many years of flying. The ones who are burnt out and don’t want to be there crop up from time to time, but I’ve come across far more senior flight attendants who do a fantastic job than those who don’t.

For me, the new people have been very VERY strong when it comes to looking the part. You guys are put together and look immaculate. The rest of us are shabby and more comfortable. However when dealing with the passengers I think there’s only so much you can teach people in a classroom. The new hires seem very robotic when dealing with passengers’ concerns. They do the right thing but don’t always sound sincere. They may also use 1000 words to address a concern but a seasoned veteran will deal with the same problem, getting a better result, in 50 words. I guess it just comes from seeing it all and dealing with it many times over. Some of the new hires tend to freak out about little things. I had one the other day that wasted fifteen minutes running around the plane looking for a Coke when we all knew we only had Pepsi left. When the search ended in predicted vain, the girl put on her “devastated” face and apologized for not being able to give the guy a Coke. She tearfully asked if Pepsi would be ok and prepared to get slapped across the face. He said “Of course it’s ok” and that was that, not a problem at all. So rather than nip it in the bud and fess up about the lack of Coke and ask if Pepsi was alright, she ran around, bothered every cabin, and made her cart partner work much harder. Being scared to death of giving a passenger any kind of bad news is definitely a new hire thing. I was like that 16 years ago.

I guess that’s it for now. I really hope Jaysen enjoys his career at our airline. It seems like he is so far. I will feel slightly responsible if he ends up hating the job and wasting the best years of his life. If you have any questions for Jaysen that we didn’t address, send me an email and we’ll answer them post haste.  easley.brian@gmail.com

Ten Colorful Places

These are my ten favorite places/things in the world that make me appreciate Color. Forget the black and white film for these!

The Hindu festival of Colors in India- I need to go sometime!

Times Square at night after a rain

The tulip fields in Holland

White Haven beach in Australia- insanely blue water and blinding white sand

Great Barrier Reef coral

New England in the Fall

The Northern Lights

South African wildflower fields- need to check that out too!

Cinque Terre, Italy

and of course the Shinjuku area of Tokyo at night!

Straight Guy Lesson #20- Seat Back Pockets

For as long as there’s been air travel, passengers, flight attendants, and cleaning crews alike have been fascinated by the contents of the seat back pockets.

They always remind me of that game on The Price is Right when the contestant had to blindly stick their hand in the big bag and pull out a chip. Sometimes the chip would help them win a wonderful prize. Sometimes the chip would get them closer to the booby prize. Sometimes the chip would be a strike and they were one step closer to leaving the show with only whatever shitty thing they had won to get them out of Contestants’ Row and on to the stage.

Almost everyone I talk to has a story of leaving something behind on the plane, usually in the seat back pocket. I myself left my little Canon digital camera in seat 19C on JetStar flight 912 from Sydney to Townsville on Saturday February 21, 2004, not that I really remember or am incredibly bitter. No, it’s not like I had the entire Australian/New Zealand holiday on that camera or anything! Grrrr! Seriously, let me know if you come across it people! You can have the camera, I just want the memory card! But I digress…

Every flight attendant I know has a story of finding a wedding ring, iPod, or wallet in there. They say they get returned to the rightful owner but I’m really not sure. This never happens to me in any case. I only find chewed-up gum and wet tissues.

Still though, we all think that there’s something magical in there, like there is in the cartoons when someone sticks their hand into a kangaroo’s pouch. You can’t just go in with your guns blazing, though, there could be a million things in there and only 5 are good: iPod, iPad, camera, PSP, or wallet. You need to treat that seat back pocket with the utmost respect and with a poet’s tenderness. Pretend the entire thing is a Faberge egg. I know someone who got stuck by a needle! Off they go for a series of tests.

Other than the unknown surprises, there are some things you know will be in the seat back pocket: the inflight magazine, online shopping catalogue, and that staple of the ages, the barf bag. Yes they’re still there and yes people still use them often. Which reminds me, be careful when you handle yours, sometimes people like to use them and just put them back in the seat back pocket. Neither the flight attendants nor the aircraft cleaners will notice this so it will remain in there, stewing, festering, and morphing into something quite alien.

My dear friend and fellow blogger Sara (pictured above) was asking me about barf bags just the other day and that’s what got me thinking about them and about the seat back pockets in general. We decided to both write about the subject.  Here is what she had to say…

“On my flight home from St. Louis I was bored, tired, restless, and probably still a little bit drunk from the night before. (see picture above for what I think Sara meant by that). I began exploring the seat back pocket in front of me. I thumbed through the Sky Mall magazine, the American Airlines magazine, the Spanish language magazine, and some new magazine that they are now wasting money on publishing. I was looking for one thing…. the barf bag.

I was really curious to see just how deep the airline cost-cutting had gone. Did they still provide barf bags to all passengers? In 31 years of flying, I do not recall ever having partaken usage of a barf bag. I also do not recall ever having seen a fellow passenger utilize this resource. It seems like people don’t really get air sick anymore? I would LOVE to know the annual cost of barf bag purchases by American Airlines. And…. success. They do still provide barf bags. They even now spend more money by printing messages on them!

After reading this article about all the crap people dump in seat back pockets, I can see the benefit of providing these and suggesting that they be used for diaper disposal. ew”

Well Sara, let me tell you what I’ve noticed about the barf bags. They do indeed get used, and sometimes even for vomiting into! Unfortunately they’re small and often times the sick person isn’t just throwing up once. That little baggie gets filled up pretty quickly and then we have a problem. They can either go to bag #2 or make a run for the bathroom. I try to stay away from bag #1.

Personally when I hear that someone is getting sick, I fetch one of the large “market bags” we use to collect rubbish. Those things are massive and don’t leak. An entire row could use it as a regurgitation trough and there’d still be plenty of room for more.

Surprisingly enough, we do use those barf bags for other purposes, really useful things. Sometimes passengers have medications that need to be kept cold so we’ll fill the bags with ice and put their meds on top, then return everything to the passenger. Sometimes people get injured or feel feverish so we can turn the bags into little ice packs (always checking to make sure they’re clean inside first, of course.)

Whenever we have a super cool and/or smoking hot passenger that the crew wants to bestow a gift to, those little bags are the perfect size to stash a handful of vodka minis. It’s kinda like we’re packing their lunch for them as they run out the door and off to school, except they’re running out of the plane and off to have a smoke.

Side note: I bet the airlines make money off all the publications in the seat back from the advertising. Just a guess though.

You’ll want to read what Sara has to say about running with the bulls in Pamplona.  SAngRiA Smiles 🙂 is the name of her blog.

Straight Guy Lesson #19- Duty Free

Duty Free shopping is a wonderful thing when you’re traveling abroad. You can find deals on everything from perfume to alcohol to local food specialties. Part of the fun of international travel is seeing what goods they have at the airport’s Duty Free Shop.

Duty Free shopping inflight, however, is a pointless pain in the ass, at least for the flight attendants. It’s a miniscule part for what you do as an international flight attendant but I’ll give you the rundown anyways.

It’s a two-man operation and usually selling Duty Free just means you make a quick lap of the cabin with a heavy cart and say things like “Duty Free purchases?”, “Duty Free today?” “Do me free?” “We have the same crap on the way back.” “You can get this stuff at the airport when you land.” “Duty Free?” “Cigarettes, alcohol, jewelry, fragrances?” “Something for your loved ones meeting you at the airport who will be expecting a gift?” Some of those we say louder than others.

No one really buys anything, though sometimes they’ll stop us and look at the merchandise for half an hour, trying on all the watches and sniffing all the fragrances. This is annoying because as soon as Duty Free is done, we can start our breaks and take a nap. When we get too impatient we’ll leave them with the catalogue and tell them that if they decide on something just to find one of us and we’ll make the sale, knowing full well that by the time they get back to us the Duty Free carts will be locked and sealed.

Flight Attendants hate selling Duty Free and the person in charge of it is always the most junior member of the crew. I don’t understand why we even do it inflight. The passengers could’ve bought the stuff in the airport before we left and in most cases, at the airport when we get in.

When you arrive in airports like London Heathrow, you can’t even exit the airport without going through a massive Duty Free store first. When you leave an airport like Rome Fiumicino, you can’t even get to your gate without going through Duty Free first.

We rarely sell anything inflight and if we do, it’s the cheapest crap imaginable, like the cartons of Benson and Hedges cigarettes, Tolberone chocolates, or an eye mask. The sales hardly make up for the cost of the fuel needed to carry the extra weight of the two heavy Duty Free carts. The airlines must get paid a lot of money to put the carts on the plane because we always have them onboard.

The only practical use of the Duty Free process is having access to electronic chargers. I can charge my phone and iPod on the plane without having to make much of an effort or lug around cords and chargers all over the world. When the cart is opened I can take out the necessary equipment, plug them into a seat power port, go about my business, and then a couple of hours later put the chargers back in the box for resale on a later flight.

There’s also a hangover remedy that we sell that some pilots swear by. I haven’t tried that one yet. I just stick to the oxygen in the cockpit for those fragile days.

There’s no incentive for us to try to sell the Duty Free crap. We get something like 3% of what we sell and they send us a check every few months. The largest check I ever received was for $24 and that was when I was flying Main Cabin a ton right around Christmas.

Sometimes flight attendants will try to market the items we have by placing them on top of the cart for all to see. Sounds like a good idea, but they always put the cheapest stuff on top, the stuff geared for the kids like jelly beans and a little teddy bear wearing a Captain’s hat. Even if they sold everything they had displayed, the money earned wouldn’t buy you a cup of coffee. They should at least promote the expensive jewelry, electronics, or watches. That makes sense to me.

Oh, another fun thing about Duty Free is watching the gentlemen check out each and every ladies’ watch and fragrance we have, and we have A LOT! The time and money he spends on Duty Free is a great gauge to how bad he fucked up on his business trip away from his wife and family.

Some female flight attendants are great at flirting with the men and talking the saps into buying them something expensive or good smelling. I’ve seen it happen time and time again.

The entire Duty Free process on the plane usually takes half an hour. We go through the plane, sell the goods, count the money, inventory the cart, fill out the paperwork, and then lock up the carts with seals and padlocks. Easy, but annoying.

On my last trip it took well over an hour just to finish selling the shit and collect the money because the lady I was working with was trying to sell everything in Euros, convert them into dollars out of her pocket so she’d have Euros for the layover in Rome, and then make all the numbers add up correctly.

By the time I counted everything and finished the rest of the work, we were nearly at the two-hour mark. Somehow all the numbers added up but I’m pretty sure I lost money out of my pocket trying to make change for all these people paying with $100 bills.  The lady insisted on letting them pay with them and I have no idea why.  I usually say “correct change or credit card only.”  We don’t get paid enough to deal with all that shit.

Theoretically, one way you can get ahead in life via the Duty Free cart is to take cash from the people purchasing things. We get a 15% employment discount on everything we buy as crew members. So if a passenger buys a $300 watch and gives you cash for it, you can just secretly claim the purchase as your own, use your card which will only be charged $255, and walk away with a $45 profit. It’s win-win since the passenger isn’t getting ripped off in the slightest, just the company. I don’t know anyone who’s actually tried this but I’m sure it’s just a matter of time.

 

August 12, 2011 GIG-JFK

Bored… Bored… Bored… I am so bored!

On the plane between Rio and New York, heading North.  I’m not sure where we are exactly but it’s about 3am NYC time.  About an hour ago we were over Venezuela.  I could tell by all the oil rigs.  We have about three hours left.  All my passengers are dead asleep.

I slept like a rock on my break, which was good because I’m not sure when my next good sleep will be.  It won’t be tonight because that’s now and we land at 6:30am.  I’ll sleep for a few hours during the day and then go out with Cindy, Diggy, Buffy, and Sport in the East Village.  Diggy and his DJ buddies are throwing a party on Houston and Orchard.  I’m sure that will be a late night.  I’m positive of that.  So that will be very little sleep because the next day I gotta get up at 10am to watch the Liverpool game on TV and then head straight over to Newark to stand by for the SAS flight to Stockholm.  So that night will be spent on a plane and not much sleeping will happen then I’m sure.

Once I get to Sweden I reckon I’ll be out partying all five nights.  I can only hope we sleep in during the day, but I’ll be way too excited to do that.  I’ll be up early and wanting to wander around and check out Stockholm with my camera and journal.  I think my best bet is to take a sleeping pill on the plane to Stockholm and sleep all the way there.  At least I’ll be hitting the ground fully rested.  I won’t be at my house again until the night of the 23rd.  I left it on July 29th so that’s nearly a month.  I’m glad I don’t have any pets.  My plants will be lucky to be alive.

I got the lowest maintenance plants known to man.  My mom once threw one away and six months later it was still alive.  That’s the perfect plant for me.  I like my friendships that are like that.  They can remain dormant yet preserved thru months of neglect.

It’s really like I don’t even have a house.  I’m not sure why I got one.  Obama’s $8000 First Time Home Buyers tax credit was too good to pass up.  I love being home more than anything, but I’m also perfectly happy staying in New York and running around with my friends there on my days off.  I also love to travel and could do that forever.  I always thought it was a good thing to be that adaptable, being able to live anywhere, but now I think it says something about my personality, and maybe that’s not necessarily a good thing.  Maybe that’s why I’m still single.

I’m getting even more bored.  This flight is dragging.  I’m eating Brazilian cheese balls by the handful and drinking vegetable broth just out of boredom.  I’ve also noticed that I’ve been staring at the ice cream for the last ten minutes. It’s as good as in my stomach.

I’m so damn bored that I’m now racing glasses of juice.  I had set out ten little glasses of OJ and apple juice in case someone woke up and wanted one.  They’re sitting on the counter and the vibration from the plane is causing them to very slowly move down the countertop.  At first I thought the lady I’m flying with kept moving them but then I noticed it happened again when she was in the back of the plane.  They don’t go very fast.  It takes several minutes to travel a few inches.  They’re moving at glacier speed.

That’s when I decided to race two of them.  I picked an orange and an apple and made sure they held the same exact amount of juice.  I moved them back ten inches and let them go.  It’s been about five minutes now and Apple has moved 3cm and Orange 1cm.  It’s like watching turtles race.  I decided it’s more fun if I don’t watch them and just check back every few minutes to see how they’re going.

All the other glasses of juice are lined up in the back, cheering them on.  There are seven orange juices and just one apple so I’m rooting for Apple.  He’s a loner, Dottie, a rebel.  Some of the OJ spectators aren’t staying where they’re supposed to on the sidelines.  They’re slowly vibrating their way on to the track.

Fuck it, I’m starting the ovens early.  It won’t get us into NYC any earlier but it makes me think that we are.  The next step in all the steps that need to happen to end this flight is to serve First Class breakfast.  That should be happening in an hour but I think I’ll do it now instead, even if it means just two of us serving the entire cabin while the other two First Class stews are still on break.  Then we can move on to the next step.  Let’s get these steps done as quickly as possible, no matter how sloppy and rushed.  I’d make a horrible twelve-stepper.

Dying in a Plane Crash

I get asked about Plane Crashes more than anything else when I tell people I’m a flight attendant…by FAR!  It’s not even close between that topic and all the rest (unruly passengers and the mile high club)

People are fascinated by it.  I’m guessing because there are very few things in this world that are more visually impressive than a plane crash.  Not impressive in a good way, but it certainly creates a lasting image doesn’t it?  Think of how people rubberneck to see a fender bender; what if you were creeping by a wrecked 747? Of course you would look and remember every detail of what you saw.

Honestly though, I don’t think about it that often.  I mean would you if you were flying half a million miles every year? If it does happen though, and I’ve already told my mom this, don’t feel like that’s the worst way a person could go. Here are worse ways to die in my opinion (in no particular order)

Eaten by piranhas

Burned to death

Buried alive (in either cold snow or hot sand or anything in between)

Dipped into boiling tar- who really cares if feathers are later added?

Locked-in syndrome-usually follows a stroke, very drawn out and painful

Eaten alive by fire ants, or any kind of ants.  In fact it’d suck just as much to be eaten alive by lady bugs

Wood Chipper (it was horrible enough watching Steve Buscemi in one in Fargo, and he was already dead!)

Tossed into the ocean with concrete blocks on your feet.  Most of the traditional mob deaths would be worse than a plane crash, though Joe Pesci’s death in Goodfellas might be alright.

Lost in the middle of the ocean.  That may just be my personal worst way to die. I don’t like to even think about it.

Being on the Titanic, nearly as bad as above but at least you’re not alone and hopefully you had some decent food and entertainment before the iceberg- maybe you even had the chance to draw a rich girl naked!

Starvation

Crucifixion

Falling into a pit of snakes

Falling into a cave, breaking a leg, and never being able to get help

Smoke Monster from Lost

Watching that video from The Ring

Saying “Candyman” three times in the mirror

Anything Freddy Krueger related

Any of the ways you learn about when you go to the Torture Museum in Amsterdam http://www.torturemuseum.com/

I’m sure in those few seconds when you realize your plane is going down you’re going to experience terror like no other, but luckily it doesn’t last for very long and death itself is very quick and painless.  I’m not saying that’s how I want to go, but at least it’s quick.  And as far as the conversation in Clerks about masturbating one last time before you die in a plane crash… could you really get an erection in that moment?

So those are my thoughts on plane crashes, now please never ask me about them if I meet you in a bar or especially if we meet on a plane.  Next blog will be much more upbeat I promise. This was probably the wrong thing to post just hours before I have to fly for thirteen days in a row.

July 19, 2011 Madrid, Spain

Just got back from the obligatory outing for food.  I was out of my hotel room for only half an hour, then right back in and I don’t feel bad about that.  I need to rest.  I need to recover.  I’m on Day 8 of 12 in a row of flying and I was very sick on Day 1.  I blame the Charlie Sheen/Amy Winehouse weekend we had on the Guadalupe as to why I was sick to begin with.  I’m not a teenager anymore and I really need days to recover from things like that, not working a stretch of 12 days starting the very next day.  It was the absolute worst time to be sick but there was nothing to do about it.  I need money.

I could’ve taken it easy on the layovers but I had plans for three of the four and they were set in stone.  This Madrid one is the only one I had free for R and R.  I have it highlighted on my calendar with a big smiley face and exclamation marks.

The first trip was to London the same night that I left Austin. That was when I was really hurting.  I ached all over with a fever and sore throat.  But I had a date to go to Ghost the Musical in the West End with two lovely co-workers followed by an after party with the cast and crew.  That day included way too much champagne before, during, and after the performance and not enough food, but it was fun talking with the actor that played Willy Lopez, the thug-life killer.

I don’t even remember what I did when I got back to New York but the night probably started and ended with NyQuil, again with no food. I can’t remember if I’m supposed to be starving or feeding this damn thing!

Next day was Paris and I was surprised to find that I was starting to feel a little better. I really thought the London layover would take its toll and send me back to Square One. We were a bit delayed getting to the hotel because of a flight attendant and an asshole passenger getting into a fight and having the police meet us at the gate, but I still got a decent nap in before meeting my Aussie friend and her mom at their hotel just off the Champs Elysees.

I blame the stew just as much as the passenger for that whole mess. The drunk girls in the row behind the PAX didn’t help matters at all.  Everyone even the least bit involved made it so much worse. I didn’t think it was worth it to get the police involved; nothing was going to happen to the guy. Sure enough, they scared him a bit and then let him go on his way like nothing ever happened.

I got to the Hotel Powers just after 2pm and at around 8pm we finally left the room, but only to go back to the liquor store because our three bottles of wine were gone. This time we got champagne and some random drink called Desperado that infused beer and tequila and red.  I think red may have been the healthiest thing in there. It’s the sort of purchase you make only after drinking three bottles of wine without any food.  We did think about food when we were getting reinforcements but it was all for show, God knew it didn’t matter at that point if I ate or not.  By the time I left the hotel after midnight I had only eaten 7 little pickles and about 30 crackers with hummus on it.

Again, I was hoping to finally get some rest but plans get in the way.  My Swedish friend is getting kicked out of our country in two weeks so I’m making sure I hang out with her and her boyfriend as much as possible when I’m in New York.  I got in from Paris, watched the World Cup final, and then headed straight out to the Brooklyn Bridge to meet my friends.  We walked across the bridge, took some pictures, stood in line at Grimaldi’s for an hour, ate a ton of pizza, and then called it a night. I resisted the urge to stay out and watch a movie.  I knew I needed the rest. I promised we could have a big night very soon, just not that night. I was proud of making the right decisions regarding my health.

So now I’m in Madrid and the weather is beautiful out there.  People are having amazing, memorable days in Spain and I could not care less.  I don’t feel bad at all about not doing anything.  I have a stack of Netflix I’ve been carrying around for three weeks and now more than ever I need to be good about getting those things watched and back to whence they came.  I think I’m going to cancel my membership.

An hour or so ago I washed the jeans I’ve been wearing everyday for the last week in the sink with shampoo. They needed it, though I’m not sure they’ll be dry by the time I need to leave in nine hours.  I didn’t think of that.

Tomorrow night in New York there are more plans to hang out with my soon to be Departed Friends and I’m hoping we can keep it substance free.  The big night out I promised will NOT be happening tomorrow night if I can help it.

My final trip of this ungodly stretch is back to London and there are more plans with my favorite people there. Even though I intend to sleep before going out, it doesn’t really happen there for some reason, too many distractions.  Then finally, FINALLY when I get back to New York from that London trip I can head over to Blue Jet and take the last flight out of New York back to Austin.  Just thinking about being in my own bed sounds heavenly.

The pillows here in Madrid are horrible, as they were in Paris.  I don’t get why they’d make pillows like that, all long and skinny and hard. In Paris they’re just way too fluffy.  When they sit on the bed they look so big and full but when you put your head on them they deflate so that your head is practically touching the mattress, no support at all. They look like tortillas when you microwave them.

I can sleep really well in the beds in London, when I’m given the time to sleep.

When I went out for food I forgot which city I was in until I saw a juggler in the middle of the intersection, working for tips from the people stopped at the red light.  I saw some very pretty girls with horrible bangs and ugly frames around their glasses, then it was obvious that I was in Spain. I think I’m going to see if the pant presser can do anything about drying these jeans.

Straight Guy Lesson #18- Plane Crash Dreams

When you think about how your life is going to change when you get a flight attendant job you think of the normal adjustments.  You know you’ll be more nomadic, always in transit, living out of a suitcase. You’ll travel more on your days off and develop friendships with people in many different cities/countries. You’ll learn a whole new vocabulary full of airline jargon. You’ll forget the days of the week and only know dates.  The term “weekend” will lose all meaning. You’ll be able to read military time as quickly as normal time and layovers will be in terms of hours, not days.  Even if your layover is exactly two days, you’ll say “forty-eight hours” and not “two days.”

I knew all of those things would happen.  I was ready for it. What I was not expecting or even warned about was all the plane crash dreams I’d have and they start almost immediately.  I think my first one came during the first week of flight attendant training.  When all you hear all day and all night for seven weeks is about mechanicals, crashes, evacuations, medical emergencies, emergency equipment locations, terrorists, hijackers, and general airplane safety, it really is no wonder your brain keeps it going even while you slumber.

I had several dreams a week during training and I prayed once I was on the line and had a life again, it’d calm down.  I thought getting out of the airline bubble and exposing myself to non-airline things would do me a world of good. The frequency of the dreams did calm down, but never went away.  For my first few years of flying I’d still have plane crash dreams once a week.  Then it slowed to once a month.  Thirteen years ago today I was in flight attendant training and I can say that now I still have these dreams once a month, at least once a month.  I have more dreams about planes crashing than about sex, which is a damn shame.  Can we at least mix the two?  Please?

It took me awhile to mention this to my other classmates during training but once the topic was on the table, we were all in agreement.  I wasn’t the only one suffering from this nocturnal hell. My classmates and I even noticed several prominent, repeating themes in these dreams.  One was this recurring thing where we’d be flying over water at a very low altitude, so low that the tops of waves would lick the bottom of the plane.  Eventually a big wave would come over and just drag the plane down into the murky depths.

Another universal theme was flying under things like power lines or bridges, sometimes through tunnels as well.  I’d say at least half of my plane crash dreams have to do with power lines or bridges.  We usually make it under but our wings clip something and we go down.

I wasn’t really that shocked when I learned that other flight attendants had plane crash dreams but I was fascinated by the fact that skimming the ocean and flying under things was something shared by most of my colleagues.  Even some flight attendants from airlines in other continents have said the same thing. I’d really like someone to explain that one to me!  Thoughts people?

I think the strangest part of these dreams is that I always survive. Sometimes we all do, but usually I’m the only one.  I think when it happens for real I won’t even panic.  I’ve seen it played out hundreds of times before and I know what to expect. I’ve kinda known from the day I started this job that I’m going to die in a plane crash. I’m not pessimistic or scared, it’s just a feeling I have.

On May 22, 2008 I had an interesting twist on the usual  ho-hum plane crash dream.   This is my journal entry from that day…

I had the most disturbing dream today.  It was a plane crash dream- which I’ve kinda gotten used to.  When I first wake up they disturb me just as much as ever but the staying power doesn’t last that long anymore, just a moment of terror then right back to sleep. 

Today though, for the very first time, I had one of these dreams while I was sleeping on the plane inflight. 

In my dream we had just taken off from LGA and after a couple of minutes the Captain made a frantic announcement as the plane started struggling and flying erratically.  Unfortunately the PA system was really bad and I couldn’t understand a word he said, it sounded like on the subway, or Charlie Brown’s teacher, or Kenny from South Park. 

I could tell we were going down but also turning around, trying to make it back to LGA.  I didn’t care.  I didn’t even look out the window to see what was going on; I just knew it wasn’t going to end well.  People were screaming and we kept going down and turning sharply.  I just stared forward and tried to go to sleep. 

Eventually I looked out the window right when we were about ten feet from the water, though we were also right by land.  You could tell the pilot was trying to go down in the water but close enough where you wouldn’t have to swim very far to get to shore.  That made a lot of sense to me.  He did a great job with the dying aircraft and splashed it down with minimal damage on the edge of the bay.  The top of the aircraft was blown off but that only made it easier to get out. 

When the plane settled, no one moved.  I didn’t understand why so I jumped up from my seat, climbed out the gaping hole, ran down the wing toward the shore, and jumped out into the shallow water.  I knew we weren’t supposed to bring anything with us but I also knew no one was going to run me down and stop me so I grabbed all my stuff. 

When I finally got off the plane and to safety, I looked back and saw that the wreck was actually worse than I thought.  There was a very good chance the people in the front may have been badly hurt or killed.  My photojournalism training kicked in and I started taking pictures of this “spot news.”  Funny how my need to help the other people didn’t really enter into it.

I woke up right about then, right when our plane started it’s descent for landing at LGA.  I woke up in a fright, I mean it really fucked with me.  Was it just one of those things or was this some kind of premonition?  I can’t explain how different it was having a plane crash dream while flying, but it definitely added an extra layer of terror.  I guess because the best part of a nightmare is that you wake up and realize you’re safe at home and so far removed from whatever you were experiencing, but this time I woke up and I was in the exact situation as in my nightmare.

Straight Guy Lesson #17- Worldwide Good Times

If you’re a new hire flight attendant you’re going to have to work all major holidays.  Even if you’ve been flying for several years, you’re going to have to work on them. Just get used to that fact right now. Tell your family to schedule Christmas a few days before or after.

Sometimes it’s not that bad though.  Some hotels really go all out to give crew members a good time on important days.  The New Year’s Eve party at our layover hotel in London has become legendary.  July 4th is a pretty big deal there as well and they don’t even celebrate the damn holiday.  In fact they’re helping us celebrate the fact that we don’t belong to them anymore.  Hmmm, maybe they’re happy about that?

I don’t mind working some holidays because I know I’m going to have a good time.  That got me thinking about certain dates I like to be in other foreign cities throughout the year.  Here is a list of events and festivals to shoot for in all twelve months.  I threw a few American ones in there too for good measure.

January

1. Chinese New Year in any city in China though a watered down version can be experienced in many large cities world-wide.
2. Australia Day in any major city in Australia.  As if the Aussies needed an excuse to go crazy and drink a lot of beer. Lots of great beach parties.
3. Republic Day in India.  Why not?
4. Big Day Out music festivals in Adelaide, Sydney, Perth, Gold Coast, and Melbourne
5. The featured weekend of Camel Wrestling in Selcuk, Turkey.  Haven’t done it/seen it, but apparently the best matches are in January.

February

1. Mardi Gras or Carnival parties in New Orleans, Trinidad, Rio, or Venice.  Try them all!
2. The Naked Festival in Saidai-Ji, Japan though it’s more loin clothes than naked people
3. Tango Festival in Buenos Aires.  Nearly 100 free shows and concerts and the perfect place to be in late February/early March
4. Late February- early March is the ten-day Rondy celebration of Alaskan life in Anchorage.  Dog-sled races, human-sled races, elk hot dogs, frost bite foot races, snow ball fights, mobile outhouse races, and more fur than you can possibly imagine.  PETA hasn’t heard about this one yet I guess.  Just check out the website athttp://www.furrondy.net/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=207:lets-rondy1&catid=80:rondy-rokfeature

March

1. St. Patrick’s Day in Dublin.  do it.  DO IT!!!
2. SXSW Music or Film Festivals in Austin, Texas.  Lots of free events and the atmosphere spreads over the entire city.
3. March Madness in Las Vegas.  Gambling at its finest and most tragic.
4. Holi or Doul Jatra Hindu celebrations of color in India, Nepal, and Sri Lanka. You get bonfires as well adults throwing colored powder and water all over each other.

April

1. Queens Day in Amsterdam.  must see.  Must See.  MUST SEE!  Come early, be loud, stay late, wear orange.
2. Hana Matsuri (flower festival) in Toei, Japan .  The highlight is the Dance of the Demon
3. Cherry Blossoms in Japan.  If you can’t go to Japan, check out the Brooklyn Botanical gardens.
4. Coachella Music Festival in southern California, still obscure enough to be respected, but go soon.

May

1. Indianapolis 500 weekend in Indy.  Very underrated place to spend Memorial Day.
2. Life Fest in Dublin.  Techno heaven and rated one of the Top Ten festivals in all of Europe.
3. Cinco de Mayo in Mexico or anywhere with Mexicans.
4. The International Clown Festival. Every year clowns from throughout the world congregate in Denmark for Svendborg’s International Clown Festival. I’ve got to see this before I die!
5. Kentucky Derby.  Go all out, get yourself an outrageous hat and enjoy those mint juleps.

June

1. Gotta see Wimbledon in London.  For cheap tickets wait in the long queue and get the afternoon pass.  Have some strawberries and cream.
2. Portugal Day celebrations all over the country.  Off the hizzy.
3. Bonaroo music festival in Tennessee.  There’s something there for everyone.
4. Cheese rolling in Gloucestershire, England.  Again, why not?

July

1. Get in Paris for the last leg of the Tour de France. I’ve never done it but I’ve been trying for years.
2. Bastille Day- anywhere in France.  Especially fun right after the French win the World Cup but that probably won’t happen again in our lifetime.
3. Roskilde Music Festival in Denmark.  there aren’t many times when it’s pleasant to be outside in Denmark, but this is surely one of them.
4. Running of the Bulls AND Running of the Nudes in Pamplona, Spain.  Yeah, PETA has a protest that involves naked Spaniards.
5. And of course any layover in the USA will be fun for July 4th

August

1. Reading or Leeds music festival in England, though it’ll make you feel old
2. Pukkelpop music festival in Belgium.  see note above about Reading/Leeds
3. Fringe Arts Festival in Edinburgh.  Often duplicated, never replicated
4. La Tomatina tomato festival in Bunol, Spain.  You’ve seen videos from this I promise. It’s kinda like a wet t-shirt contest but with tomatoes instead of buckets of water, and it’s co-ed.
5. The Highland Games in Argyle, Scotland.  Where men are men.

September

1. Burning Man in northern Nevada.  It now costs you over $200 to get in, but worth every penny.
2. Oktoberfest in Bavaria, Germany.  The grandaddy of them all. Try to squeeze in the festival celebrating the onion in Griesheim as well.

October

1. Anniversary of the “No!”  Greeks commemorate Prime Minister Metaxas’ rejection of the ultimatum made by Italian dictator Mussolini.  Celebrations all over Greece.
2. Though not solely an American holiday, it may as well be.  Halloween in any city, town, village in the United States is a great night out.  The warmer the weather, the skimpier the costumes!

November

1. El Dia de los Muertos, Day of the Dead in Mexico.  Grab your sugar skulls and Catrina dolls and suddenly realize Tim Burton isn’t as creative as you once thought.
2. Monkey Worshipping Festival in Thailand.  I tried to have an NYC event in the Bronx Zoo for those who couldn’t make it all the way to Thailand but it wasn’t the same.

December

1. Dickensian Christmas in Rochester, England.  Get your Oliver Twist on.
2. These aren’t just in December but my list for this month was short so I’ll mention the Full Moon Parties in Thailand here.

Being able to work trips to different parts of the world and experience events like these and get paid at the same time is what it’s all about.  Seeing Japanese men in diapers might not be the best way to spend your day but it’s a pretty fun thing to do on the clock.  Think of what you’re usually doing during the work day, isn’t watching men roll wheels of cheese down a hill sound like more fun?

Straight Guy Lesson #16- How to Dine on Layovers

Thank You to DinnersFromHell.com for featuring this entry on your website.

It was my first Paris layover and since I don’t speak a lick of French I decided to stick with my crew.  Usually I like to venture out on my own in a new city, but I knew dinner was going to be a massive problem if left to my own devises.

In addition to being a vegetarian, I’m by far the pickiest eater I know and I could see myself accidentally ordering all kinds of horrible things without outside guidance.  Even the most popular items on the menu could be something disgusting and I wouldn’t even realize it.

For some reason I’m incredibly shy about trying to order food in strange countries.  I’ve heard horror stories about Parisians giving major attitude and scorn to Americans who don’t at least try to speak the language.  I’d love to try but I just can’t.  I really don’t know the language whatsoever.  That bluff would be a miserable fail.

The pilots and five of the other flight attendants (including our French speaker from the flight) agree to meet under the Eiffel Tower at 8pm.  I spend most of the day running around with my camera, trying to capture as much as of the city as I could on film in the hours given.  I made sure I was at the Eiffel Tower at 8pm though.  In fact, I was there at 7:00, just in time to get yelled at in French for stepping on some grass where apparently there’s a “Keep Off Grass” sign.

We find an Italian place in a not-so-touristy area just across the Seine.  If I’d been smart enough to think of Italian food I wouldn’t need to be with the crew, I can read the names of Italian dishes no problem.  Oh well, I’m here now so let’s roll with it.

I’m a pretty light eater and I like to save money when I go out.  I think it’s ridiculous to spend 12 Euro on a single glass of wine, especially if you’re just going to have the one glass and not catch a buzz.  What’s the point?  I don’t do appetizers or salad unless that’s going to be my entire meal.  I never take dessert or an after-dinner drink.  All of that is just a waste of money for me.  I can have some drinks at a bar before dinner for much cheaper.  I can eat an ice cream from a street vendor after we leave the restaurant at a fraction of the cost.

So the crew orders and I watch it happen.  A couple of people want this appetizer and a couple more want this other one.  It’s decided that the table will order three apps and everyone will just share them.  I don’t object.  I let it happen.

I’m drinking soda but everyone else gets wine with sparkling water on the side.  Again, it’s decided that three bottles of each is good for everyone to share.  I think that’s a smart decision on their part and fail to recognize how and why I’m being a complete idiot.

I have one basic pasta dish while everyone else gets some soup, salad, antipasti, and second course.  I marvel at the appetites these people have, even the skinny girls and waif thin gay boys I’m flying with.  The wine runs dry and the flight attendants order more.  I wonder if I’m getting paid the same amount as they are, the tab is really adding up in a hurry!

If I knew the pilots were going to be paying for the meal I might partake in some of the extras but I know that’s not going to happen.  There are two gay boys with us and the pilots very rarely treat guys to dinner, especially the gay ones.  I’m not willing to bank on that possibility that my dinner will be free.  I order sensibly and thriftily.

Everyone finishes and they ask us if we want desserts, cordials, or coffee.  All three are ordered.  I think about it but look at the prices and decide against it.  I can get a latte for a third that price at the coffee shop just around the corner from the hotel.  Again, I think I’m being so responsible and smart.  I’m about to see the error of my ways.

That moment arrives soon enough when the bill comes.  It never occurred to me that paying for what you ordered wouldn’t be an option.  My crew, now wasted on wine and Sambuca, insist that if we just divide by eight then we’ll be set.  Everyone is okay with that.  It’s at that point that I realize why the flight attendants were ordering more than the pilots.

They knew this was going to happen.  If the pilots are going to order all these extras and then make the crew split the bill, the only way to come out ahead is to top them and order more yourself.  Well played flight attendants, well played.

There’s nothing I could do but pull out sixty Euros and think about the fifteen Euros worth of Coke and penne alla arrabiata I had.  I grab the last bottle of wine still standing and empty it into my pristine, virginal glass.  If I’m paying for this I may as well get as much out of it as I can.  I grab a fork and shovel the rest of the Tiramisu into my mouth.  Lesson learned, but at a price.

Now I avoid eating with the crews as much as I can, at least in that large of a group.  Smaller groups will let you get away with paying for what you order but never a group of eight.  Never after that much alcohol.  The only way to “win” is to order the appetizer, and the soup, and the salad, and the wine, and the third bottle, and the fifth bottle, and the dessert with Cognac, and anything else you could possible want.  Hell, get a souvenir shirt and hat thrown on the tab too while you’re at it! As long as you’re eating and drinking more than everyone else, you come out ahead since the bill is getting split evenly.  If you don’t play the game like that, it’s going to be a dinner from hell.

Straight Lesson #14- Commuting

Whether you like it or not, if you’re based in NYC like 99% of all new hires are based, eventually you’re going to be a commuter. This is true for almost all major airlines.  New York is almost always the junior base.  I just read that over 70% of all New York City flight attendants are commuters.

I never heard the term “Commuter” growing up in Texas.  I may have seen a movie where some guy in Westchester was “commuting” on a train into Manhattan every day but I didn’t really get it, nor did i care.  Once I got this job and got sent to New York City though, I had my crash course on what this commuting thing is all about.

There is only so much you can take of New York City and then you want out. Sometimes it’s your age that causes the exodus, sometimes it’s just getting sick of the weather, or the people, or the expensive, yet claustrophobic rentals.  It may be the filth, or the rodents, or the fact that you are no longer shocked when you see someone masturbating on the A train during rush hour.

Some people reach this breaking point within days.  They just never give New York a chance and I feel sorry for those people.  Others give it a chance and go with it as long as possible. Eventually you’ll hit that tipping point and want out.  I loved being in New York in my 20s, I had the time of my life.  By the time I was 30 though, I’d been in New York for 7 years and it was already too long.  It took another three years to pull the trigger but I knew I was done with it.

It’s such a wonderful feeling living in the city you’re based.  It’s so easy.  When those silly commuters are rushing to catch a flight and stabbing each other in the back to be the first one on the list for the jumpseat, you’re on the subway and within an hour you’ll be on your sofa watching your DVR-ed shows with a cocktail in your hand.  Commuting sucks, in theory and in practice.

Eventually your priorities will change and the cons of living in New York will outweigh the pros and you move away and start the life of a Commuter.  Since you fly for free it’s not really a matter of money that makes it such a pain in the ass.  It’s a waste of time and can be incredibly stressful. When you get off a plane the last thing you want to do is deal with airports and more planes.

Airline people can be very creative when it comes to getting home.  You wouldn’t think that flying from New York to Nashville to Dallas back up to Chicago is the best way to get home, but sometimes that’s the only way to get home, so you do it.  I’ve flown from Dallas to Los Angeles in order to get to New York.  I know some people who will fly to London from NYC just to get to Texas.  To successfully be a commuter you need to think outside the box.  This also includes Amtrak, Greyhound, and selling your body for a ride to a random airport where there just might be an open seat.

Some commuters like to stay at home as long as possible and will pick flights to get them back to NYC just minutes before they need to sign in for the trips they need to be working.  That’s cutting it close and there’s absolutely no margin for error.  Other people are Chicken Littles and come up a day early to make sure they’re at base in plenty of time.

When you become a commuter all of a sudden you can’t fly half the trips available.  They either sign in way too early to fly up in time or they get back to New York way too late to fly home.  The trips that leave in the evening and get back in the morning are the most wanted trips for commuters. You don’t even think about that when you live in the city you’re based.  That’s so nice.

Some commuters go home after every trip, even if they only have one night at home.  Others like to back up their trips so they only have to commute up once or twice a month.  Personally I like to have a week off, then work three trips in a row (usually nine days), go home for another week, and then work another three trips.  That’s what I’ll do until I win the lottery.

The backstabbing that goes on between crew members trying to commute is simply vicious.  It’s really entertaining when you’re not involved but sucks when you’re one of the horses in the race.  It’s hilarious when two people who have just worked together for the last five days are fighting for the one jumpseat on the same flight. They’ll play nice working together but it’s always present, hanging over their heads, the elephant in the room.

They know the second they land back in New York it’s a race to get listed for that flight.  Technically you’re not supposed to check in for your commuter flight until you get to the gate but no one ever waits that long.  Most people call and list as soon as the wheels touch the ground.  It’s understood amongst crew members that this is proper protocol.  What’s not kosher, however, is having a spouse or friend check you in for the flight before you actually land in New York.  That’s a huge no-no and people get in a lot of trouble for that.  Not only will you be a social pariah, you can get your flight benefits taken away from you by the company.

As soon as you touch down, the race is on and the fun begins.

St. Patrick’s Day 2011 Tokyo

We’re about three hours away from landing at Tokyo Haneda, not too shabby. We’re flying right along the International Date Line.  I have no idea which side we’re on.  I have no idea what day it is.  I slept during my entire three-hour break.  It was fantastic.  My one and only passenger is still asleep.  I haven’t had to do anything for the entire flight.

There are three meal services to do up here in First Class between New York and Tokyo but I didn’t have to do a thing or cook a single meal other than the needy cockpit.  Well 3/4ths of them were needy, one was really nice and low maintenance. I just move the carts around in preparation for maybe working, but it never came to that. This is easy money.  Not only am I not having to do shit, we’re understaffed by two people so that will be an extra $270 in my pocket. Because of the earthquake and subsequent tsunami and subsequent nuclear power plant explosions, all the people who were supposed to work this trip didn’t show up.  They had to scramble to find minimum crew.  I didn’t care, I needed the hours.  What’s a little extra radiation? If I can’t be tan I may as well be green.

Now I have the last meal service ready to go along with the chocolate chip cookies which I baked to perfection.  Too bad no one will know anything about them because no one will eat them, not even I.  Unfortunately the strange blind man in 1J is coming back with us to New York the morning after tomorrow.  He only booked this flight to rack up some miles.  I guess he needs a few more long flights to retain his status of Executive Prick.

I liked him when he first got on, how could I not with him being the one and only First Class passenger? Me being overly nice was my eventual downfall.  When offering him the newspapers before take off I elaborated on each and every paper we had.  Usually I just say, “Paper today?”

No, I was going to make a point of providing excellent customer service so I did just that and said more about the papers we had than what was printed in the papers themselves.  I felt pretty good about how I presented them but the guy just glares in my general direction and says, “I’m blind!”  Oops.  I had no idea.  It looked like he had a lazy eye but it also looked like the other one was okay.  I apologized and he said it was fine but things would never be the same between he and I.  The worst part was while he was eating his meal (from coach), I was sitting in the empty seat/pod in front of him working on my bids.  I was facing backwards so that I could keep an eye on my cabin.  The man calls the Pursor over and complains that I’m staring at him while he’s eating and it makes him feel uncomfortable.  So I give up, is he blind or not?  I guess only when convenient.

The sun was down when we took off and has been down ever since.  It’ll never come up on this thirteen-hour flight.  It’s nearly 7pm in Tokyo and so the sun has set there as well.  I love it.  The other straight male flight attendant was bitching about it being dark the entire flight but I couldn’t be happier.  A sleeping passenger is a happy passenger.

One hour away.  My passenger is still sleeping though I’m not sure if he’s still blind or not.  I caught him reading his menu earlier.  We’re right above Sapporo and took a turn so that we’re now going straight south.  I’m looking forward to seeing a new hotel.  That’s always fun, especially in Japan where they usually have random things.  I’m also excited about being in a new city.  Tokyo and Narita are not the same thing at all.  That’s like saying Yonkers is the same as Manhattan. I already told my crew that my room is open for nightcaps when we get in.  One guy and one girl have already given me their RSVP.

NEXT DAY-  I’m trying to decide if I want to try to figure out the subway and go into downtown Tokyo.  I know I do but I’m really dragging my feet here.  Some of it is getting over a hangover from my room party last night.  It wasn’t a party so much as just having Kylie and Max over for drinks, music, and Uno.  At 4am we were all wasted and falling asleep on the floor.  I blame the physical exhaustion rather than the vodka.  We called it a night and everyone stumbled back to their rooms.

When I woke up at 9:30am I was still drunk.  When I woke up at 3pm I was still drunk.  The room is still spinning and it’s 5pm.  There could be an earthquake and I’ll probably not even realize it because I’ve been feeling the floor move all day.  WOW, while I was typing that sentence we really did have an earthquake.  The blinds started moving as if the window was open and a breeze was coming in.  Everything else just kinda shifted and slided for about 10 seconds.  A quick check with the USGS website confirmed the quake.  Ok, I may need to get out of here. I don’t want to be found in my underwear in rubble.

Back from my excursion into downtown Tokyo.  It was a little dicey for a while but I made it.   It had nothing to do with natural elements, it was all my own stupidity.  I’m glad I went out today.  Just the subway ride alone was worth it.  The people watching was out of this world.

It’s incredibly easy getting to downtown from here in Yokohama, even though it takes a long time if you’re on a local train.  I only had 600 yen and 440 of it was used to buy my ticket into town.  I figured I could find an ATM or charge my return ticket.  I wasn’t worried.

I got off at the lost stop- Shibuya, that famous place where they have the massive intersection where hundreds of people cross the street every single time the Walk sign comes on.  The first thing I do is cross with the masses and it feels electric.  This is already way better than that boring ol’ Narita layover.  Tokyo is pretty stimulating.

After I cross the street I try to figure out the best way to take a picture of the insanity.  I see there’s an enclosed walking bridge connecting the train station to another building across the street.  It has large glass windows and is three floors above ground.  That should work.  I go up there and get my photo along with thirty outtakes.  From there I just wander around the streets.  I go down little side streets and I go down busy boulevards with huge buildings and big colorful signs.

Everything is photo worthy.  Anything written in Japanese looks like it needs its picture taken. I got pictures of some restaurants, strip clubs, internet/karaoke combo stores, and then a series of a group of firefighters surrounding a building looking intense.  There were at least twenty of them and five fire trucks but no one ever saw smoke or fire, though we were all staring at the same building for half an hour.

I realized it’s St. Patrick’s Day but I’m not sure if it’s appropriate to pinch people in Japan. I’m not even sure if they know to wear green today. A see a few kids wearing green jeans but I think they wear those any day of the week. I doubt it’s a celebration of Irish Pride. Should I educate them on the phenomenon? I think I’d be cute to see more teens wearing, “Kiss Me I’m Irish” pins. None of the firemen are wearing green but they look like they’d get mad if I pinched them.

Along the way I looked for currency exchange places and ATMs.  I found no exchange places but many ATMs.  Most ATMs weren’t in English and the ones that were, didn’t seem to like my cards.  Uh-oh!

Eventually I realized that I wasn’t going to be able to get out any money.  There’s just no way.  That’s when the search for loose yen began.  I looked on the ground, I looked around over fifty vending machines, I even looked for some kind of fountain where people might throw in coins for luck.  I saw a band playing for change outside a train station and thought about just borrowing a little from them.  I’m sure they wouldn’t have minded if I left them a twenty-dollar bill. It almost came to that.

I had a few yen, enough for a kids ticket or a very short ride, like maybe to the next station.  At least I could buy a ticket to get into the station and get on a train. You can’t get onto a train without some sort of ticket to put into the machine. I decided to just do that and then I’d figure it out when I got back to my stop.  I went to the self-serve machine and put in the rest of my coins.  I got a ticket that would only let me exit a stop or two down the line, but that’s alright, I’ll just keep going even though I know I’ll have major problems later.  At least I’d be near the hotel before someone confronts me on this.  I couldn’t decide if it’d be better to claim out-of-town ignorance or say that I lost my ticket.  I practiced both scenes.

I spend most of the time on the train worrying about this and taking photos of all the Japanese men and women in their little white masks.  Looks like I accidentally got on a train car that’s supposed to be just for women.  It’s all pink and says “women only” but I’m not the only guy on here so I don’t worry about it.

When I get to my station I see that I’m the only one to get off the train.  It’s at a big mall and conference center so after it closes for the night, the area is a ghost town.  That’s a good thing.  I see an exit turnstile and it’s wide open.  There are a couple random people standing around but I don’t think they’re cops or Metro employees.  I take a deep breath and just walk through quickly, but not suspiciously fast.  The once-opened doors start to close on me but I slide through them.  Some kind of bad beeping and red light flashing occur so I just keep going and look confused in case anyone is looking.

There are several exits for the station but I take the very first one I come to.  I run up the escalator and don’t look back until I’m above ground and out of the station.  Thank God.  That could have been a nasty situation, especially if no one spoke English.  I had a feeling it’d be ok but at the same time, it could’ve ended badly and I knew that.  I was very thankful that my exit was a relative non-event.  Next time, bring yen and lot’s of it.  Now I have six hours to kill before my 4:40am pick up.  Thank God for free internet and March Madness.

Straight Lesson #12- The Total Body Work Out

I was non-revving from New York City back home to Austin on a full flight.  I was lucky to get on as a stand-by.  I had a window seat but a girl was sitting next to me, reading a fitness magazine.  She read that thing for over four hours.  I  had no idea there was that much to actually read in a fitness magazine but apparently there is.  I read over her shoulder some of the time and I hoped that she could tell that I was reading over her shoulder and not looking down her blouse.  I hope her dad across the aisle just didn’t see anything at all.  One article was about a basic work out cycle for the week:

Day 1- Upper body

Day 2- Lower body

Day 3- Day of Rest

Day 4- Upper body

Day 5- Lower body

Day 6- Cardio

Day 7- Cardio

I’d love to be in better shape and maybe drop a few pounds but I just can’t get myself to join a gym or go out and play sports, mainly because no one will play with me.  I literally have a trunk full of sports gear that never gets used.  It’s always too hot or too cold or too this or too that or their kid needs to go to the frickin’ Emergency Room because their fever won’t break.  It’s always SOMETHING!

So I decided to come up with a workout routine that any flight attendant can follow.  On the days you’re supposed to work out your upper body, those are the days you work the galley.  You move heavy racks of food from the carts to the ovens.  You open a dozen of bottles of wine.  You carry inserts full of soda to the middle of the cabin and leave them there for use inflight.  You break the massive brick of melted and then re-frozen ice catering gives you into normal sized cubes.

Then you can just move things around for the fun of it.  You don’t really have to move all the other inserts of soda from the Supplement Cart to the cubbies in the galley but you can in the name of health.  During boarding, you can get out there and actually help the passengers with their heavy bags.  We’re not supposed to lift anything that’s not ours, but we’re going for a look here people, so it’s worth the risk of injuring your back and being out for a month, uncovered by insurance because we were doing things we aren’t supposed to.  When everyone is asleep you can do dips using the jumpseat to work your triceps.  In the hotel room we can do some push ups and sit ups to further the cause.  If you’re not ready for proper push ups, start by doing some 45 degree angle ones in the bathroom against the sink.  It’s a start.

On the Lower Body days we’re going to be in the aisle.  We’re going to pull those carts up and down the aisle all by ourselves.  If someone asks to help, we’re going to say “Get Away”, we’re working our calves!  To really feel the burn we’re going to pull the carts up right after take off, while the plane is still climbing at a steep incline.  Make sure you’re capable of this though, if you accidentally let go of the cart, someone will get a knee shattered when the cart hits them.

We’ll also help out with closing all the overhead bins right after boarding.   We’re going to step on the seat and concentrate on working our legs.  Often times that’s the only way for short people to close the middle overhead bins, to elevate on the aisle seat.  Most people recruit a tall man to get up and close the middle overhead bins but we’re working on our Adonis body so we’ll do it ourselves, up and down on every single row until all the bins are closed.

Once we get to the hotel we can take the stairs instead of the elevator.  We can go balls-out and do the stairs with our luggage in tow but that’s not recommended for beginners.  Word of advice:  don’t take the stairs too quickly, you can make yourself dizzy and nauseous going around in circles like that.

For the cardio days we can start by actually answering some of those call lights and doing our fifteen minute walk-arounds that we’re supposed to do.  If you answer every call light that goes off, right when it goes off, you’ll find that you’re up and moving around the entire flight.  So instead of rolling your eyes when the chime goes off and thinking, “I’m sure they meant to turn on their overhead light,” get out there and check it out!  Go the long way if you have to.  If the call light is right by you at 43J, go all the way up the A/B side to the front of the cabin then back down the H/J side until you get to the seat in need, whatever gets the heart pumping.  If you’re on a spacious plane you can do a variety of calisthenics in the coach galley.  There’s room for several people to run in place, do jumping jacks, or throw down some yoga mats.  On the layover you can take long walks or better yet, jog.  if you’re in a nice neighborhood, take a run and check out your beautiful surroundings.  If you’re in the hood, just pretend that someone’s chasing you.

The most obvious solution to getting a killer body without joining a gym is to go to the hotel gym whenever available.  Barring that, these everyday exercises on and off the plane can get you in shape and healthier without doing anything out of your normal work routine.  Of course having a healthy sex life never hurt anyone either.

Straight Lesson #11- Foreign Taxis

The absolute worst part of any vacation abroad is getting out of the airport when you land, provided that they don’t have a decent public transit system. Thank you Amsterdam for taking care of that in epic fashion! Sometimes worse things happen to you during your trip, but those things are unexpected.  On every trip you take you’re going to have to deal with exiting the airport, unless you’re some kind of weirdo that just likes visiting airports.

You will be hustled and get the run-around and there isn’t anything you can do about it.  You think going to an official taxi stand is the way to go, well not always.  You think taking a ride from someone dressed really well is a smart move, well not always.  Last time I was somewhere dodgy was last week when I was in Buenos Aires.  I checked out the ride situation.  There were several people trying to get me into their cars but I didn’t commit at first.  I noticed that well over half of the cars out there were black and yellow Radio Taxis.  I figured they were probably the most honest ones out there, so I took them.  They probably were the most honest but they still ripped me off shamelessly.  The lesson I learned from them: always have small denominations to avoid relying on them to give you change.  They never have change.  Even if you see the exact change in their hand, they’ll lie and tell you that’s not really money, it’s lottery tickets or Kleenex or some shit like that.

Don’t be fooled by any driver with a crucifix or rosary beads hanging from the rear view mirror.  It’s doesn’t mean they won’t financially rape you.  Don’t buy it if there’s a plastic Jesus or Virgin Mary on the dashboard.  Those Saint cards that look like baseball cards on the visor doesn’t mean that the driver is a Christian and won’t break any of the Ten Commandments just to get a few extra Pesos out of you.  There is no God in a Third World taxi.

First and foremost when getting into a cab in a country where you don’t speak the language is to not let the cabbie know that you don’t know the language or where you’re trying to get to.  Know the destination of where you want to go and how to pronounce it correctly.  Even if you don’t know any other words in that language, know how to say, “take me to so-and-so please.”  The first time I went to Australia I told the driver I needed to get to Clovelly beach.  I pronounced it “Claw Velly” instead of “Cloe Velly” and forty minutes later I was where I needed to go.  It wasn’t until days later when I took a cab back to the airport that I realized how close those two places are to each other and how horribly the driver had ripped me off by taking the most scenic route possible.  I think we were somewhere near Ayers Rock for a while.  So say the destination correctly and hopefully your bluff will work.  A good follow-up step is to take out your cell phone and pretend like you’re talking to someone the entire time you’re in the cab.  That keeps the driver from asking you questions and accidentally discovering that you’re completely full of crap.  If you don’t want to keep up that charade then put headphones on and ignore the driver if he tries to talk to you.

If there are tolls to pay en route pay them yourself as you go through them.  Often times the driver will tell you that he’ll take care of it and you can just add it to the fare at the end.  “Wow, that’s was nice of him” you’ll think!  Bullshit!  Keep your eye on the sign on what they charge.  You will be charged at least ten times that when it comes time to pay the guy.  He’ll explain it by making up some crazy excuse like the “Driving an Aries on a Thursday following a New Moon” surcharge.

When you finally get to your destination he’ll try to get you one last time, or take it upon himself to tip himself.  Put up some resistance to keep at least some of your money but don’t create a bad scene that could turn dangerous.  The old trick of showing him your empty wallet works.  Turn those pockets inside out and translate the phrase, “You can’t get blood from a stone.”  It’s frustrating and infuriating, and you’ll feel completely useless/helpless but at least you’re where you need to be and  the nightmare is over.

When getting back to the airport you can play it just right and not be screwed over too badly.  You want to tell the driver that you’re in a hurry but not too much of a hurry.  If he think you have plenty of time then he’ll go down random streets and purposely get stuck in traffic, or worse, fill up with gas while the meter runs.  That’s when all of a sudden all four tires need to be filled with air and the oil needs to be changed.  He’ll drag that drive out as long as possible and take you for as much as he can.  If you tell him that you’re in a big hurry however, he’ll try to charge you for some sort of expediting fee that doesn’t exist at all.  He’ll say he can get you to the airport in time for your flight but he’ll need extra money because he’ll be breaking all sorts of speeding and traffic laws.  It’s a fine line and you need to know how to walk it.  To avoid the gas station detour, check his tank before you get in, that way you know and he knows that you’re not a complete schmuck.  Go ahead and take out your air pressure gauge and check the tire pressure as well.

If you must talk to the driver, tell him that his city is your favorite city you’ve ever been to.  Tell him the food is wonderful, their local sports team is the best, and the girls are beautiful.  This might make him happy but it won’t stop him from doing that thing he can do to the meter to make it charge faster.  I thought that was an urban legend until I saw a guy do it, again in Argentina.  He did something weird with some wires under the hood and I didn’t think anything of it.  By the time we got to the airport it read 340 Pesos on the meter when it was only 150 going the other direction from the same spot.  Only 8 of those 340 Pesos were wasted at the gas station as he let the gas slowly drip into the tank.  Some cabbies rig their meters so that they flip for an eighth of a mile every time they perform a certain operation, like a turn signal or flashing their brights.  I know, pretty brilliant!  Now I know why my guy kept running the windshield wipers!

Forget all about the NYC Taxi Customer Bill of Rights.  Those don’t exist anywhere but New York.  And don’t get your hopes up of stumbling into Cash Cab Bogotá, it doesn’t exist.  Ben Bailey won’t be giving you money as you get taken around town.  There will be no Red Light Challenge.  Street Shout Outs would probably be a bad idea anyways.

So 99% of the cab drivers you come across, especially in poorer countries will try to take you for all that you have.  It’s going to happen so just don’t let it ruin your holiday.  It’s inevitable.  It will suck and even though you know it’ll suck, you’ll still complain while it’s happening exactly how you knew it was going to happen.  Just suck it up, get through it, and get on with your holiday.  It’s smooth sailing after that, until the cab ride back to the airport.

Straight Guy Lesson #6- The Flight Attendant Interview

The Flight Attendant Interview

Every non-airline person has always wanted to know certain things about the flight attendant job and lifestyle.  This can work for you in some rare cases, but usually it’ll lead to annoyance.  When meeting someone for the first time and the subject of employment comes up, pray that you’re not the first flight attendant they’ve ever met. If you are, they’ll take their big opportunity to ask all the questions they’ve ever wanted to know and they’ll shoot them off at you like an AK47.

The script goes something like this… Stranger in bar asks you, the aloof drunk muttering to himself, your name.  They don’t understand what you say, they just nod and smile followed by, “What do you do for a living?”  You cringe and mumble, “flight attendant”.  Their ears perk up.  At this point you know you’re either going to hear them bitch about how their last flight went horribly wrong, or you’re getting the dreaded Flight Attendant Interview.  You pray for a lost luggage story.  The stranger’s eyes widen and without a moment’s hesitation, out comes:

Are you gay?

Do you get to fly all over the world for free?

What airline do you work for?

What’s your route?

How long do you get to stay at the city you fly to?

Do they put you up at a hotel?

Do they pay for your meals when you’re away?

Do you hook up with all the stewardesses?

Are you sure you’re not gay?

Can you hook me up with a stewardess?

Can you get her to wear the uniform?

Do you like to be called a steward or a flight attendant or what?

How does your schedule work?

Do you have a boy/girl in every city?

How long have you done the job?

Where are you stationed? (yeah right, it’s like the military)

Did you have to do some kind of training or schooling?

What’s the worst thing that’s happened?

Have you ever had really bad turbulence?

Have you almost crashed and died a gruesome death?

Seriously, you’re not gay?

Do you see many people trying to join the mile high club?

Have you joined the mile high club?

How might I join the mile high club?

Do you have Buddy Passes?

Can I have a Buddy Pass?

What was your Major before you failed out of community college?

After going through that song and dance a few times you’ll just stop asking people what they do because you don’t want the question returned.  When someone asks you, just say you’re unemployed, it’s easier for everyone.  Better yet, buy a voice recorder and keep all the answers to the Flight Attendant Interview recorded and ready to go.  If someone you don’t care about starts in with the interview, just push play on the recorder, go to the bar to get yourself another drink while they listen to all the answers.  By the time you’re back they’ll know everything they ever wanted to know and you can then talk about something less painful.

Straight Guy Lesson #5- Hotel Rooms

Hotel rooms- your home away from home and little slice of space just for you.

If you’re a full-time flyer then you may spend between 60-100 nights a year in a hotel room, depending on the type of trip you fly.  If you have seven two-days trips each month then that ends up being around 84 nights at a hotel each year.  If you only do five three-day Europe trips then you’ll start at the 60 mark.  That’s before you pick up a single trip, and everyone starting out picks up at least one extra trip a month.  So roughly a fourth of your year/life will be spent in hotel rooms. Learn to love them.

The airlines have promised you certain things when it comes to accommodation on the job.  You’re not supposed to be on the bottom floor for safety reasons.  The hotel should have food available 24/7, or at least very near food.  You’re always given the option of a non-smoking room, which however, may be a floor that allows smoking.  Those rooms are annoying, like the smoke knows to stop at your door and not go in.  That’s about it as far as the hotel’s responsibility to you.  As long as the hotel meets those criterium then they’re an option for the Hotel Board to decide on.  The range of hotels in staggering.  For the most part it’s an inverse relationship.  The nicer the country, the more meager the hotel.  The shittier the country, the more luxurious the hotel.  London is a closet.  Port Au Prince is a palace.

You’ll find that some of your crew members are way too particular when they request their room.  It’s ridiculous and it’s embarrassing.  I feel so sorry for anyone that has to deal with pilots and flight attendants, mostly van drivers and hotel staff.  You must really be a masochist to voluntarily put up with that hell.  I don’t feel as bad for airport security, we give them a hard time but they usually deserve it.  Some crew members don’t want to be on a floor too high up because there’s no water pressure.  The low floors have too much street noise.  The rooms near ice machines and elevators are too noisy.  The rooms near the microwave room are also too noisy.  In fact they don’t want to even be on the floor that has the microwave because it all smells like weird food, especially if Asian airlines stay at the hotel.  It’s like they have a particular room in mind and won’t quit until they get it. Airline people get a little too comfortable and start taking things for granted.  It’s the unbearable lightness of being.

Even though all rooms are different you’ll try to keep a basic set-up and routine.  We crave structure and are all creatures of habit.  You’ll keep your suitcase in same place in every single room.  Some people utilize the closet and the drawers.  I don’t bother with the drawers, it’s just too much work to unpack and then repack a few hours later. It’s easier living out of the suitcase.  When we get in we all set up the bathroom how we want it.  We have the toiletries laid out just so and our uniform hung neatly in the closet.  Some people have a cleaning ritual that includes putting on their own sheets and pillowcases brought from home.  The hotel sheets get washed so I’m ok with those but the comforters or duvets are ignored so those are pretty nasty and my naked body will never touch them.

Ignorance really is bliss.  Don’t think too deeply on what may or may not be in your room or look too closely to the refilled body wash/shampoo bottles.  At least the little bottle of mouthwash is factory sealed.  Ignore that undercover news report you saw online about how the glasses get cleaned in hotel rooms, sometimes with the same rag that was just used to wipe off the toilet.  Never look under the bed!  Some people use the shower cap as a condom for the remote control and phone receiver.  To test for bed bugs put the bar soap on the bed and check back with it later.  Apparently bed bugs head right for that.  I’m not sure if that’s true, it may be one of those tricks you use to fool yourself into thinking everything is just fine. One of my favorite layover games is to check for the one maid hair that’s found in every shower.  It’s like playing Where’s Waldo.  It may take you half an hour but that hair is always in there somewhere, sometimes on the ceiling.  A word to the wise, some people use the coffee makers to clean their panty hose.  Gross.  I sometimes use it to reheat food or warm a can of soup.  I’ve also found that if your room has one of those fancy pant-pressers you can use that to make a pseudo grilled cheese sandwich.

You’ll do all your dirty stuff in a hotel room, the messy things you don’t want to do at home, like dying your hair or having period sex.  I used to try to keep the room as clean as possible, as a favor to the maid.  I try to be a team player.  I put a liner in the trash can which I’m sure helps a lot.  I tried to leave the room cleaner than I found it but then I heard that rooms left like that don’t really get cleaned that well by the maids.  Now I’ll trash their room on purpose just so it HAS to be cleaned.

You usually get a little fridge in your room but if you’re staying somewhere cold you can use the ledge outside the window as a fridge extension.  It really frees up some space, especially if your fridge is crammed full of useless minibar items that cost way too much.  In some places, like Caracas, you can sometimes get free porn if you clip your ID to the cable going into the TV.  Most hotels are onto that one because some idiot flight attendant left his ID behind when he checked out and then had to call the hotel for someone to get it.  How do you explain why your ID is clipped to the back of a TV unless something is up?  Every now and then your porn channel will come in unscrambled.  If that happens then watch it for as long as you can because once you turn the channel, it’s gone forever.  If you turn back then it’ll be scrambled again and the free porn will be nothing but a distant memory.  Some hotels have secret hiding places that crew members will use to leave goodies for each other.  The Los Angeles Bonaventure was famous for that.  The hotel is circular and the far wall of the hotel rooms is curved, the one made entirely of windows.  Because the ceiling doesn’t exactly fit flush to the curved wall, there are little gaps where you can reach up if you stand on the desk.  People leave all sorts of things up there: porn, minis of liquor, wine, People magazine.

You’ll find that spending so much time in hotels will eliminate certain chores you have to do at home, like shopping for toilet paper, shampoo, hand lotion, towels, and shower curtains.  If you tell the maid that your significant other LOVES the way you smell in their lotion, she likely to hook you up with dozens of bottles.  Score!

The worst feeling is checking out of the hotel and realizing you left food in the fridge (or on the ledge outside the window.)  That precious food has probably been all around the world with you and you were so looking forward to having that on the flight back home.  You might need to leave a post-it note on the door to remind yourself.

So make your room your own and learn to love living out of a suitcase.  It may be one of the few things you really have control over when you’re on the job.  Try to see a layover as a much-needed break from reality rather than being stuck away from all that are near and dear to you.

Straight Guy Lesson #4-Probation

Every major airline has a probationary period that starts after you complete your training when you get “on the line.”  During this hellish time (usually a few months) you can be fired for absolutely anything without an explanation or apology.  One day you’ll be working, the next day you’ll be back wherever you came from.  During Probation you will be scared shitless anytime anything goes remotely wrong, no matter how ridiculous or insignificant.  Any time you have to tell a passenger that you’ve run out of their first meal choice or that they won’t make their connecting flight is told with such unspeakable dread.  Any disagreement with a fellow crew member is reason to toss and turn all night long.  You hold your tongue no matter what people say to you or how horribly they treat you.  Like a slave, you just turn the other cheek and take whatever is thrown at you. Thank you Sir may I have another?!  You’ll feel like you have no soul or backbone.  In your mind you have all your witty comebacks and how exactly you’re going to tell the passengers off, but just file those away for a while.  You’ll have plenty of time to be a jerk right back to the passengers later on, but for now, you have to play ball.

You may find yourself allowing three hours travel time to get to the airport when it normally takes forty-five minutes.  You cannot be too careful.  That day when you get off of probation is circled in red on your calendar. Your life will change that day, especially if you work for an airline that has a union.  Once the union covers you then it’s damn near impossible to get fired, no matter how hard you try.  Feel free to use all the witty retorts and give all the attitude you wish after you make it off of probation.

Just in case you think you may get fired though, here are some Must Dos that you need to accomplish ASAP. Once you’ve completed this list then you’ve pretty much done the best things you can do as a flight attendant and you can hold your head up high as you’re being fired for gross incompetence or whatever they say you did or did not do.  You’ll also have the staple photographs and scars that prove that you were at one time a flight attendant.

#1  Have your picture taken sitting in the Captain’s seat

#2  Have your picture taken standing in an engine

#3  Have your picture taken lying inside an overhead bin

#4  Join the Mile High Club

#5  Stay out all night on a layover and show up for pick up without sleep or shower

#6  Hook up on a layover with local

#7  Show up to the airport on your days off and just fly somewhere random, just because you can

#8  Sit in the cockpit for either take-off or landing

#9  Hook up on a layover with another crew member

#10  When you ferry a flight (no passengers, just crew) sit on a plastic tray at the front of the aircraft in the aisle and “aisle surf” during take off.  Hopefully you’ll be on a wide body aircraft with two aisles and you can race a friend.  Gambling will occur, not only on who wins the race but also on who bleeds the most.  Fun times for everyone.

#11 Upgrade someone just for the hell of it

#12 Get an oven rack burn/scar.  No one will believe you were a flight attendant until you have scar lines on your forearms.  In fact, burn off all your fingerprints as well, just like a real flight attendant.

Straight Guy Lesson #3- Other Straight Flight Attendants

The dynamics of your relationships with other straight male flight attendants are very complicated as well.  It’s a fascinating case study.  We are a small fraternity of brothers and it seems every year you’re losing members to the other side, sometimes members you’d never think that would fall to the dark side.  Sometimes our most successful members put in a trade request.  Ultimately, everyone gets their trade request, no matter how much their parents, best friends, or ex-lovers object.  For the most part all the straight guys get along really well.  It’s welcoming to have another dude around you can talk to about straight guy stuff for a couple of days.

If you’re at a base long enough you’re going to hear about every other straight guy at the base and people will be shocked that you don’t all know each other.  “What?!  Of course you know Kevin!  He’s straight too, slept with half the base.  Really funny guy.  Yeah, you have to know him.”  Of course that’s as silly as asking a black guy if he knows this other guy Ty that also lives in Atlanta.  “Oh I’m sure you know him, he’s black too.”

Some flight attendant bases are massive and you can go years without meeting everyone.  After 12 years I still meet people for the first time when I get on a plane to work a trip.  You sure hear about the other straight guys though, especially if they’re single and active.  It’s always funny at that moment when you finally meet another Straight for the first time.  You know so much about him.  You’ve been hearing about him for years and you know about all the other flight attendants he’s slept with and you probably have a couple in common.  That’s usually a good bonding point and will be discussed later in the bar over some whiskey drinks and Sportscenter.  Of course whoever got there first will have bragging rights for all time.  A word of advice though, when you start laughing about a girl you had a fun layover with and you know that he had also been with her, make sure she was just a fling and not a serious girlfriend.  Nothing is more awkward than making comments about a girl and then finding out that your new straight friend used to be engaged to her but she broke it off at the last minute.  Trust me.

I love meeting the other straight ones.  It’s like meeting a long-lost sibling or a unicorn.  There may be a little competition on the plane or at the bar to win a girl’s favor but after you’ve been flying for a few years you really don’t care if you win or not.  It’s just fun being a guy with other guys and talking about guy stuff.

There’s another faction out there though, but thank god they’re becoming extinct.  I haven’t seen them in years but they’re out there for sure.  They are the straight homophobes that wear the Superman pin on their uniform.  I noticed this once when I was brand new and asked the guy if he was a Superman fan.  He looked at me with an intense seriousness and dragged me into the galley so he could tell me about his secret organization, much like the Masons or Stone Cutters.  He said that the S Superman pin meant something much more important than liking some silly comic book character.  The S meant that he was a Straight and that was how he let the world know that he wasn’t just another “faggot flight attendant.”  I was shocked.  I figured most people could tell by talking to a person for a few minutes if they were a Straight or a Gay but I guess he needs a shiny blue and red pin to help them out.  He said us Straights need to stick together and that he’d put a Superman pin in my mailbox at the airport so I could join the club (cult).  I think he was planning a revolution or something because this was all done very hush-hush with constant checks around us to make sure no one was listening in.  I guess we can’t let the Gays catch wind of this!

I’m not sure how he thought everyone would instinctively know that the S pin meant that he was straight though.  I didn’t get that part.  I was apparently being groomed for fast entry into the club and I didn’t even know what it meant.  What chance would anyone else have?  Lots of flight attendants wear pins on their jackets or aprons during the service and no one bats an eye.  So watch out for those guys.  They are the Scientologists of the airline industry and completely whacked out.  I think most of them have quit the job once they realized they just weren’t going to eliminate the Gays from the flight attendant profession.  There are still a few stragglers though, I hear stories from the underground.  They usually hang out with the pilots on layovers.

And so it begins…OKC 7:38am

When I saw an overloaded business guy running OJ-style through the Oklahoma City airport with all his carry-ons dangling from every limb, my first reaction was to laugh at the idiot who overslept.  I know he didn’t get stuck in traffic, it’s 7:30am on a Sunday morning and there wasn’t a car on the road when we came here.  I saw more tumbleweeds than cars on the road.  He had no one to blame but himself so therefore he gets pointed and laughed at.  Then, with a sudden chill in a moment of clarity, I realized that maybe he’s trying to catch the flight to DFW before mine.  If he didn’t catch it then he’d be put on my flight and it’s pretty full already so an extra body might mean that I won’t get on.  He could make all the difference.  He might be the Tipping Point.  If I don’t get on then I won’t make the one and only flight from Dallas to JFK.  If I miss that then I won’t make the flight I have to work to Zurich at 6pm.  If I miss that trip then I can say goodbye to $800.  All of a sudden I wasn’t laughing at the poor schmuck, I was helping him out.  I had an insane urge to run along side him and motivate him, giving him cups of water, encouraging him, or putting him down like a drill sergeant ala Full Metal Jacket, whatever it took to get him to move faster.  I didn’t do that but I picked up my pace and followed closely, sending out nothing but good vibes and little prayers.  My airline’s gates are the very last ones in the terminal and it seemed that’s just where he was heading.  Luckily he turned off at another airline just before mine and promptly got into a fight with the agent because the door was closed yet the plane was still sitting there at the gate.  I don’t sympathize with the passengers very often but I really don’t get why they don’t just run down, crack the door, let the straggler on, and go about their business.  Forget delays or tower permission, no one has to know anything.  I know how long it takes to disarm the forward entry door, open it, let a person on, close it, and then arm it again.  It actually takes less time than it took for me to type all of that out.  It seems like such a little thing that would save a lot of trouble for everyone involved.  Nothing is more frustrating than being told you missed a flight that’s still just sitting there with the jet bridge attached.  Nothing is more exhilarating than thinking you missed a flight and then somehow finding your way into a seat.  Sure enough the agent told him that he was just put on the next flight to wherever, and that was that.  Hopefully there isn’t a nonrev crewmember getting screwed over by that little scene I just witnessed.  Drama so early on a Sunday morning!  That is just obstacle one of many obstacles commuting flight attendants deal with trying to get to work.  I survived this potential roadblock but there are several more to come before I’m finally at the right gate at the right airport in the right city at the right time.  And you wonder why most of us aren’t in better moods?

The Modern Businessman

Two things that I learned right away, but was unaware of at the time of my hiring are this: 1) my airline caters to the business traveler and 2) the business traveler is a strange creature.

I did not know this when I signed up for this gig; I had never even met a businessman before.  Now I see the same cookie cutter middle-aged businessman a hundred times a day.  They have the same drab suit, same iPhone phone with a Blackberry chaser, same Jimmy Johnson haircut and Jimmy Johnson hair color.  They have the same tubby stomach that they rest their identical laptop computers on.  They drink the same single malt scotch, tell the same jokes, and read the same magazines.

As worthless as these guys are to me in my existence, they aren’t that bad as passengers.  Businessmen travel all the time and know what to expect on the plane as far as the service is concerned, which limits my ability to cut corners.  They know what we will and will not do for them.  Since I’m male they aren’t that nice to me, but at the same time I don’t have to deal with them hitting on me relentlessly.  They pretty much leave me alone and I’m ok with that.

The people who travel every five years are the worst; they want everything under the sun and expect the flight attendants to do everything for them, like we did in the 1970s.  They don’t understand you have 124 other people to serve and it’s not our job to provide their baby with a diaper or stow their overstuffed suitcases in the overhead bins.

Whenever I do see a young person, early twenties to early thirties, I leech onto them like white on rice.  It is so rare a passenger is my age and traveling alone.  They must talk to me whether they’d like to or not.  Most don’t want to chat too long to the hired help though; we cater to stuck-up, self-important brats along with the older businessman.  One is the larval stage of the other: the caterpillar to the butterfly, but in a less beautiful way.

That New Plane Smell

Worse than the passengers on this flight today, is the cockpit.  I’ve already been yelled at by the Captain for keeping my First Class galley too messy.

“I’m sorry.  Screw off Sir.  Why don’t you concentrate on driving and leave the kitchen to me?  It isn’t much, but it’s all I have!”  Later he yelled at me for making him spill his coffee all over the plane’s consoles and the First Officer’s arm.

“Brian, get in here!” he says from the cockpit as the First Officer cleans up his shirt.

“Yes Captain, my Captain.”

“Look at this mess, do you know how this happened?”

“Looks like you spilled your drink all over the controls of this multi-million dollar aircraft, sir.  Got the F.O. too.”

“Yes, there was an accident and it happened because my cup was filled to the rim with piping hot coffee.”

“Yeah, coffee shouldn’t be filled that full, especially in-flight.  Even if you’re on the ground and parked at the gate you can still spill so easily.  That’s why I don’t fill it past 2/3 capacity when people ask me for a piping hot drink.”

“Then why is Glen treating his arm for burns and why is this brand new plane covered in sticky coffee?”

“I have no idea sir, I didn’t pour that cup of coffee.  Someone else poured that for you, was I the one that handed you that cup?”

“Well, go find out who poured this cup, I want to have a word with them.”

Don’t worry Ch**, I won’t rat you out.  🙂

During one of the in-flight P.A.s the Captain mentioned to the passengers that this was a new plane, second trip ever.  During deplaning one of the passengers asked the Captain if he was serious about that.  The good and proud Captain beamed and said, “Absolutely.”  He said it even had that new car smell in the cockpit still.  Chuckle chuckle.  Everyone laughed as I rolled my eyes and said that actually it smells a bit like stale coffee.  I’m not sure when exactly I stopped caring.

New York to Sydney via Tokyo 2-1-2006

Right now we’re on a path to intersect the International Date Line between Alaska and Russia in the Bearing Sea.  We’re flying parallel to it, and almost on top of it, so we’ve been near it for about an hour now.  The International Date Line sounds something you’d find at a swingers’ club. The flight map says we have five and a half hours left to Tokyo, about the time from New York to Los Angeles.

This fourteen-hour flight hasn’t been too bad so far.  I have a row of four seats to myself and even when I’m sprawled out, I barely touch that fourth seat.  The older lady flight attendant even gave me a First Class pillow, which made a good thing even better.  I slept from take off until we got near Alaska, about half the flight.  I didn’t want to sleep too long and not be able to sleep on my flight down to Sydney.  That one gets in at 7am so I really should be asleep during that entire flight if I want to avoid jet lag.  It sucks that I have to go through Tokyo in the first place.

Qantas has an employee embargo from North America, so if you’re an airline employee you have to get out of North America before you can get on one of their flights to Sydney.  It’s such a hassle and a waste of time going all the way to Japan just to go back down to Australia.  My Dallas friends are a day ahead of me so they should just be getting to Sydney now.

I have my sleeping pills handy, the crazy French ones.  That’s for the flight from Tokyo to Sydney. We’re exactly 39,000 feet in the air going 530 mph and the outside temperature is minus 63 degrees Fahrenheit, according to the trusty-rusty Flight Map.

Our flight path and the International Date Line are converging into one line, so I really have no idea what day it is.  One of the flight attendants makes a joke about still wearing the same clothes from yesterday.  Thousands and thousands of years ago creatures walked across the frozen water that’s now below me and came to North America.

I get up and make the rounds, visiting the flight attendants and seeing if there are any interesting passengers.  None of the crew members really knew an employee was on board until well into the flight and they all apologized for not noticing and upgrading me.  I was hoping someone would notice and I would have jumped at the upgrade, but not after I got settled and established in row 42 seats C thru G.  That’s good enough.

I stick my head into the First Class galley to say Hello to the ladies. The Pursor is up there and again apologizes for not giving me an upgrade.  She gives me a bottle of the less-popular French red wine and a flute of champagne instead.  She offers me everything else under the sun, but I politely decline.  She keeps pushing champagne bottles on me, but lugging around those things all over Australia is the last thing I want to do.  If I were thinking I would have taken a bagful of minis.   Time for landing.

Seeing the baggage handlers in Tokyo was such a trip.  I’m used to seeing Asians in uniforms, but usually nice ones like flight attendants and customer service type things.  They look really put together and well-groomed in those kinds of uniforms.  Seeing them don the blue collared garb just looked funny.  It didn’t fit the stereotypical Asian image to have dirty, torn uniforms covered in blood and oil.  It made the job seem a little classier though.  The guys doing their job in The States, Europe or Caribbean look like they went straight from a playground brawl to the tarmac.

I was the only white guy on the airline connections bus, but that isn’t anything new.  I’m always the token white guy on the train to the JFK airport, be it either the E through Queens or the A through Brooklyn.  Sometimes I get mad if I’m not the token white guy.  I want to scream at the other Caucasians, like that guy on the subway in Ghost, “Get off my train!”

Checking into my Qantas flight was pretty painless.  True, I went to the wrong place at first but was quickly and politely redirected, with an apologetic bow as if they had done something wrong. No, I’m just a dumbass, no need to apologize.

My flight was wide open so they gave me a boarding pass right there on the spot instead of telling me I had to wait until the last second to see if I’d get on.  I hate when they do that.  You sit around completely bored for a few hours and then having to rush rush rush to make departure at the very last second.

Now I’m sitting on the ground between the Men’s and Women’s bathrooms, charging my Ipod.  Most of the outlets are the American ones, though I have an adapter just in case.  It’s 5:45pm and my flight boards in 90 minutes.  I killed 22 minutes by watching a South Park episode here on the ground by the bathrooms.  I’m not sure if this is acceptable in Japanese culture, but there’s no guarantee that I’ll have a seat with a power outlet on the plane so it’s absolutely necessary.  If I’m offending the nation, they’re definitely not letting on.

I think about doing some shopping in the stores, but there’s nothing I really need or want.  It looks like Sanrio just exploded everywhere.  I’ve never seen so much Hello Kitty, except maybe in Ivy’s bedroom.  That’s the Narita airport for you, sushi, Hello Kitty, and a few airplanes.

August 11, 2003 Sao Paulo-JFK

I’ve seen The Simpsons in Italian, German, French, Arabic, Spanish, and now we can add Portuguese to the list thanks to late night Brazilian television.  The version that most closely resembles the voices of the real Simpsons are the Portuguese voiceover people.  Homer could’ve been better, but Lisa and Marge were fantastic. That’s really what makes or breaks a dubbed Simpsons show in my opinion.  Of course they’re going to make the main characters sound right, but if they take the time to nail Ralph Wiggum, Otto the bus driver, or Hans Moleman, then they’ve really done a fantastic job, above and beyond. I believe they really gave a shit.

The episode I watched last night is the one where they go down to Australia to settle Bart’s collect-call charge he bestowed on some unsuspecting bogan family.  Even their rendition of an Australian accent was spot on.  Well done Brazilian television! I’m glad somebody finally put some effort into getting it as close to reality as possible.

When they showed the machine in the US Embassy that reversed the spiral of the water in the toilet and made it spiral the “correct” American way, I immediately went into my fancy Sao Paulo hotel bathroom and made sure the water really did go clockwise.  It did.

I’m now on the plane back to New York and a few minutes ago I noticed on the flight map that we were crossing the equator.  I ran into the lav and did some experiments with the water and the drain.  I filled up the sink and let the water drain out.  I wanted to see which way the water went or if it’d just go straight down the drain since we were directly on top of the equator.  I tried it several times in several different ways but I didn’t get any absolute conclusions.  It just kinda went straight down which is actually what it does anywhere in the world in our lavs. I think I was the only one out of the two hundred some odd people on the plane that even thought of checking.

It’s moments like these when I feel very blessed that one of the worst parts of the job is incredible amounts of boredom you face when everyone is asleep in the middle of the night. I have to find ways to entertain myself, or else just sit and stare. I can read. I can write. I can notice little things and let my mind wander. If I have some silly notion about water spiralling down the drain and want to do some experiments, I get to do it, while getting $40 an hour.

Other people, when they think of the worst parts of their job, think of much worse things. They may have to do something utterly disgusting or dangerous.  A coworker’s life may hang in the balance based solely on their decisions and actions. They may have to come home smelling like sewage, garbage, shit, body odor, fish guts, or a crime scene. They may have to confront criminals or charge into burning buildings.

They may have to get up at ridiculous hours every single day and not come home again until the sun’s gone down. They may have to get on a ship and be at sea for months at a time without contact with loved ones. They may have to struggle through five days of torture just to reach that Mecca of the weekend where they can finally relax and do whatever it is that they really want to do.

I know I’m blessed and I wish some of my coworkers realized how blessed we really are. Some of them bitch and complain about the dumbest shit and don’t even realize that on our worst days in the office, we still have it better than 90% of the American work force.  Honestly, what’s the worst thing I have to deal with? Some passenger goes off on me for not having their choice of meal? Someone refuses to buckle their seatbelt during turbulence and we have a battle of wills? A Business Class passenger thinks they’re better than me and speaks to me in a condescending tone?  Please, who the hell cares! In a few hours those guys are off the plane and I’ll never see them again for as long as I live. I wish for one week every year our airline would make us take a job in the real world just to keep everything in perspective. Maybe after scrubbing toilets for ten hours a day that “asshole” passenger in 28J who had the gall to order his coffee without telling us if he took milk or sugar won’t seem quite as bad.

It really is a joke how little we have to complain about but that’s just human nature. It’s the Unbearable Lightness of Being. When we first start, we realize what a great and easy job we have. After a while, however, great and easy becomes base level and humans are never satisfied with normal. That’s when we take things for granted and completely lose perspective.

If we had a week every year to remind ourselves how wonderful we have it, then every single one of us would be much happier, friendlier, more accommodating workers in the name Customer Service. I know some of my coworkers think that the worst part of the job is dealing with the very real terror threat in the skies. I get that, I really do. I just don’t let that affect my view of the job.

The job is still a joke, despite that. Some flight attendants like to think that we’re on the front line in the war against terror but every job has its perils. The ladies who cleaned bathrooms in the World Trade center thought they had safe jobs. The teachers in Columbine thought they had safe jobs. The band on the Titanic thought they had a sweet ass gig. Something can happen anywhere and 99% of flight crews won’t have to seriously deal with a terrorist threat.

I don’t block out that possibility or think that I’m immune. I’m vigilant on the plane, and I’ll be the first one to tackle a guy trying to light his shoe on fire, but at the same time I don’t let that threat turn my easy breezy job into a source of stress. You just can’t live like that. I’m just sick of flying with people who think our job is on par with working in an Emergency Room, being an Air Traffic Controller or a Corrections Officer. It’s NOT, pure and simple. Those people have reason to flip out every now and then.

Ok, I guess dealing with these Chicken Littles is the worst part of my job.

June 27, 1999 New York City

Came across this old entry from my journal when I was brand new to the job and brand new to New York City. Seems like such a long time ago, definitely bittersweet remembering that time in my life. I think I had just turned 24.

6-27-99

“We met underground, the first person I have ever met underground.  I just love saying that.  It sounds like a fairy tale, like she was a troll or something.

The whole subterranean encounter was guided by the Fates.  She never takes the F train out of Queens, I never take the F train from La Guardia to the East Village, but there we were, the only two people in the car as I get on the Manhattan bound F train at Roosevelt Avenue.

I see her dressed like a glam angel, velvet pants and glitter all over.  I sit across from her and then become shy, I think it was too obvious.  I could have sat anywhere in the empty car, but I go out of my way to drag all my luggage across the car, to her sights, directly in front of her.  Now, I just sit and let my mind fantasize about what could possibly happen at this particular moment in time.  I could get a wave of courage and say something profound or charming, I could make and hold eye contact, sending soft electricity into her spiky Central American head.

Instead I sit facing her, but looking down or away, pretending to read the ads for laser eye surgery, reading and rereading the lame “poetry in motion” lines, trying to figure out how the authors got their stuff on these Barnes and Noble ads.

“Do you need a map?”

“Excuse me?”  I reply.

“Do you need a subway map?” she asks again holding up the map she was using as a fan. This was the start of the hottest Summer on record for New York City.

Realizing that I look like a tourist just off the boat with my luggage, I see where she’s coming from.

“No, I live here, I’m just getting back from work.”

“Oh yeah? What do you do?”

“I’m a flight attendant.  (I cringe saying that, now I’ll have to make an effort to prove my heterosexuality)  I’m just getting back from San Francisco.  (Again, digging myself deeper)”

She just looks at me for a second and says in a straightforward manner, “Do you want to go to a party with me?”

I think about how odd this is.  The script of the conversation says, “This girl is a freak” but the look in her eyes and my sixth sense says I should roll with it.

“Sure,” I say, trying to sound as causal as possible, like that’s something strangers ask me all the time, “but I need to go by my place to get changed and drop off my stuff.”

“Okay.  Let’s do it.  My name is Alley.”

That’s how it started, randomly on the same train, randomly in the same car, and within fifty words we have plans for the night.

I take a shower while I let her meet my roommates, not knowing she was completely ignoring them and filling her notebook with line after line of brilliant prose and poems about the same things I was thinking about in the shower.

She said the party was way-the-hell-and-gone up in the seedier parts of Washington Heights, which was one of the reasons she talked to me in the first place.  That isn’t a neighborhood a young girl should be walking through alone at night unless she’s familiar with it.

Even as the two of us passed the toothless drunks and hardened thugs, I didn’t feel too comfortable.  Every loud dominoes game was silenced as we passed.  All eyes were scoping us out, sizing us up, and contemplating our agenda.  Alley strode confidently down the avenue and side streets toward dark and lonely Riverside Drive.

It was along one of the eerily quiet back streets that I realized I really didn’t know this girl and she could be setting me up.  We were walking through one of those nightmare gray and black asphalt roads with lurking shadows stirring in the peripheral.  I don’t really remember, but I think she was smirking.  I could be robbed and killed and no one would even know.  I’m sure a gunshot would be ignored around here; I’m sure a scream would get no response at all.  I tell Alley what I’m thinking in a laughing/joking manner.  She doesn’t reply.  Gulp.

We do finally find the dilapidated building just across the Hudson from New Jersey.  We buzz the apartment as the sound reverberates throughout the dusty building.  Some guy who sounds wonderfully effeminate and not at all threatening lets us in.

The apartment is full of kids who left home to make it in New York City.  They are all aspiring musicians, playwrights, actors, and models, all celebrating gay pride in glittery pixie dust, short shorts, fabulous hair, gorgeous costumes, and numerous drugs.  It was like the 70s were wrapped up and shoved into this cramped apartment.

Everyone was having a great time telling stories, prancing around, drinking cocktails and enjoying the sweltering summer in the city.  Then there was one guy who stood out immediately.  A very out-of-place, straight-laced, Jewish teenager in the middle of a living room full of queens and fag hags.  He knew no one in the room when he arrived at the party.  He was supposed to meet Alley there, but I delayed her a good hour.  So this innocent, awkward, straight boy was at the mercy of the fucked up queens and their desire for fresh seventeen year old tail.

He was awfully glad to see us, though he did hand out water-colored flyers to the whole gang, inviting them to his next gig at the Sidewalk Cafe.  Those one-man shows of his became huge in Alphabet City, that boy can be a superstar if he wants to be- Adam Green, The K Mart Cafe Poet.”

Funny thing about Adam is that he is making it. I saw him later that same summer in England at the Reading Festival. Even now I see him on MTV in Zurich. One of the songs he wrote as a teen is the song they sing in the closing scene in Juno. Check him out for yourself.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adam_Green_(musician)

Alley formed a band and then another band and yet another band, often with her twin sister. Right now she’s in School of Seven Bells with former Secret Machines/UFOFU guy, Benjamin Curtis.  Small world, I used to watch UFOFU play in Texas when I was a teenager.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/School_of_Seven_Bells

With all the success Adam and Alley have had, I can only hope that some of that magic rubbed off on me from that summer. I guess I’m just a late bloomer.